Wisdom, Leadership & Success

In our last blog, we talked about how happiness and fulfillment come from good, high-quality relationships.

In this piece, we'll talk about the three basic ways to understand relationships, and find that covenant relationships give us the best chance for happiness and success.

Three Types of Relationships

Football, basketball and golf are all different paradigms for playing a sport. They all use the word “team”, but they mean different things by that word.

In football, there are offensive, defensive and special teams, each with 11 players. In basketball, there is one team of five on the court with players substituting in and out. Golf is generally an individual sport, but uses teams for international competitions.

The concept of team is different in each sport depending on the nature of the sport.

In the same way, in history there are three major paradigms for understanding life—a Wisdom Paradigm, Modern Paradigm and Postmodern Paradigm—and each has its own understanding of human relationships that differs based on the paradigm.

Each of these paradigms and their different understandings of relationship are present in our society today.

We’ll take a look at Modern contract relationships, Postmodern power relationships and Wisdom covenant relationships.

The more we know about each of these relationships types, the more we can engage the relationship that gives us the best chance for happiness and success—and avoid relationship types that are less effective.

Contract Relationships

In the 1500’s and 1600’s, Europe was devastated by religious wars that killed millions of people and bankrupted governments.

In response, Enlightenment thinkers of the time tried to come up with a new, modern way of understanding life that included a new understanding of human relationships.

They started with the idea that humans are radically free individuals in a state of nature—of constant war and anarchy—without basic, pre-existing relationships with others.

Individuals in this state of anarchy have lots of freedom to do whatever they want, but don’t have much security, because other people are free to do bad things to them.

The solution to this anarchy is that people come together in a social contract. They give up some of their freedom to the community or government and get security in return.

As the Modern Paradigm became a dominant way of understanding life, people began to think of all relationships as fundamentally contract relationships.

At their core, contract relationships are transactional and antagonistic.

Take the example of companies and employees.

In a contract relationship, employees want more money from the company for less work. Companies want more work from employees for less money. What is good for one is bad for the other.

Employees need jobs and companies need workers, so eventually they negotiate a contract. They establish a contractual relationship.

By definition, what’s good for the employee and good for the company are opposite. That means contract relationships are low-trust relationships.

Low-trust relationships driven by money get low levels of commitment from people. Low commitment results in low performance. That’s why contract relationships are low performance relationships.

Finally, low-trust, low-commitment relationships aren’t very stable. They are brittle. When you put them under pressure, they break.

In contractual relationships, you get the relationship you pay for.

Would you rather have friends who are with you because they love you or because you give them things?

Contract relationships are low-trust, low-performance, low-stability relationships.

Power-based Relationships

In the 1900’s, a new postmodern way of looking at life became increasingly influential in our society.

Postmodern thinking is grounded in the idea that many of the things we think are facts—like truth, morality and justice—are not facts, but simply the way we have been programmed by the powerful people in our society. They call these programmed ideas social constructs.

In postmodern thinking, everything is subjective, a matter of perspective, in the eye of the beholder. If there are no facts like objective truth, morality, or justice, then the only thing that matters in society is power.

In this postmodern approach, all relationships are power relationships—including your family and friends, and your work and community relationships.

Relationships may appear to be based in love, trust, transaction, mutually beneficial exchange, etc., but those appearances just hide the deeper reality that all relationships are grounded in nothing more than power.

Power gets exercised in a variety of ways including social pressure, bullying, money, manipulation, lying, narrative, threats, education, religion, etc.—whatever it takes to get the other person to do what you want.

Since this postmodern approach rejects objective morality, there is nothing wrong with threatening or lying to someone to get them to do what you want.

A leader that is good at lying and manipulation can lure unsuspecting people into trusting them and doing horrible things.

Fear is also a powerful tool to get people to do what you want. If someone threatens to kill your family, you will probably show a lot of commitment and high-performance.

In these ways, power-based relationships can be high-performance relationships. If the lies or fear can be maintained, power-based relationships can also be stable.

On the flip side, if the lies are discovered or the fear ends, there can be a powerful, even fatal backlash against the power-based leader. Power relationships can go from relative stability to collapse very quickly.

Many academic people—especially in the humanities—believe that all relationships are power relationships and teach that to students.

Power relationships can be relatively high-trust, high-performance and high-stability—until they collapse and aren’t. Power-based relationships treat people as things to be manipulated by whatever means necessary to get whatever you desire.

Covenant Relationships

While contract relationships start with the idea that people are radically free individuals in a state of nature, covenant relationships start with the idea that people are naturally in relationship with each other from the day they are born into families.

In covenant relationships, the good of the team and the good of the individual are the same. That is the opposite of modern contract relationships where what is good for the team is bad for the individual—and vice versa.

A team is only as good as the people on the team. The better the people are, the better the team is. So good covenant teams invest in their individual people to develop their skills, character, leadership and teamwork.

On the flip side, as an individual, the more you put into the team, the more you will develop your own skills, teamwork, character, and leadership. Improving these will help you build stronger relationships and make you more successful in all areas of your life—family, work and community.

The more the team invests in each person, the better the team gets. The more each person puts into the team, the better the person gets. In covenant relationships, the good of the team and person are the same.

Covenant relationships are not based on power or transaction. Covenant relationships are grounded in a promise—a covenant—between the community/team and each member.

The deepest covenant relationships are promises grounded in love for the other person.

When you put a covenant relationship under pressure, the people bond and the team gets tighter.

If you have been part of a championship sports or work team, or been in the US military, you have probably experienced covenant relationships. Everyone is close, trust is high, and the commitment is deep. No one is in it for the money. Everyone is in it because they care about it each other. People are willing to put their lives on the line for each other.

Covenant relationships are the highest-trust, highest-performing and most stable relationships possible. They are also the most fulfilling relationships.

Make all your relationships covenant relationships. It will give you the best chance for happiness and success in all areas of your life.

WRAP-UP

Happiness comes from good, covenant relationships.

In the next episode, we’ll talk about three virtues you can practice that will build the best covenant relationships possible.

Seek Wisdom, Practice Love and Get Results.

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Recent events have put Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the headlines. Companies, government and organizations are engaging CRT without any idea of where it comes from, what it believes or why it is profoundly dangerous.

CRT is one of many theories—including Critical Legal Theory, Intersectionality, de-constructionism, Gender Theory, etc.—that have their roots deep in postmodern thinking that started in the mid 1900's. Postmodern thinking has become increasingly dominant in academia—especially the humanities.

At its core, postmodern thinking says that there are no facts, no objective truth, and no objective morality. It explicitly rejects logic, and the idea that there is meaning or purpose in life.

Everything is subjective, a matter of perspective, opinion.

In this postmodern approach, it is not a fact that anorexia is unhealthy. It is a matter of opinion.

The postmodern rejection of facts means that saying, “Dishonesty, violence, and rape are wrong” is not a statement of fact, but simply a feeling, opinion, perspective.

If there is no objective truth, morality, or justice, then the only thing that matters is Power.

That’s why postmodern philosophies see everything in terms of perspectives and power.

All of the things that you were taught are facts—like it’s a fact that honesty is right and dishonesty is wrong—are nothing more than social constructs that the powerful programmed into you through the schools, media, culture, churches, etc.

The whole point of the postmodern theories like CRT is to de-construct the constructs you’ve been programmed with to understand how others use their power over you.

When everything is about perspective and power, words like racism develop opposite meanings.

Dr. Martin Luther King taught that it is a fact that racism is wrong because it is the unjust treatment of people of other races or ethnicities. Racism is about how you think about and treat people.

Postmodern professors teach racism in terms of power. If you have power, then you are racist. If you don’t have power, you can’t be racist.

In postmodern thinking, if you have privilege (power) because of your skin color, then your skin color makes you racist, no matter how you think about or treat people.

Older generations define racism based on the teachings of Dr. King. Younger generations are being taught the opposite, postmodern understanding: you are racist because of your skin color.

In CRT, believing in Dr. King’s teachings is an indication that you are racist.

Many of us have been taught that rather than fight, we should have respectful, rational-logical discussions with others to come to the truth and act on that truth.

Because postmodern thinking rejects logic and truth, rational discussion is absurd.

Instead, postmodern thinkers concocted the idea of narrative, a series of statements (not facts) arranged to emotionally manipulate you to submit to them.

Postmodern narrative is a way to exercise power over you through story. They can say whatever they want. They can make the narrative appear to be a logical discussion if that helps them manipulate you. They are free to change the narrative however they want—even to a contradictory story—if it controls you and gets them power.

If you argue that they are lying, you miss the point. There is no truth, so there are no lies.

You probably believe that it’s a fact that lying and racism are wrong. They’ll use that against you. By calling you a liar or racist, they can use the emotional weight you give those terms to manipulate you. There is nothing wrong with gaslighting or exploiting you. It’s just another exercise of power.

Postmodern thinking appears to be tolerant because it says you can think and do whatever you want.

In practice, postmodern leaders only tolerate what they want. When there is a disagreement with you, they will use power to force you to submit. There is nothing objectively wrong with forcing or even killing you, because again, there are no moral facts, just power.

Finally, by its very nature, postmodern thinking destroys relationships, families, and communities. When everything is a matter of personal perspective, when words mean whatever someone wants them to mean, the common concepts that bind us together like humanity, truth, justice, and morality—break down.

As those common concepts fall apart, comm-unity becomes impossible.

By their nature, CRT and postmodern thinking cannot defend the powerless, bring justice or give dignity. They use those words knowing that it gives them emotional power over you.

In a postmodern world, power always ruthlessly fights its way to the top. Power despises and crushes the less powerful.

Justice is when you have power over others. Injustice is when others have power over you.

If you introduce CRT and postmodern thinking to your organization, you will destroy the shared concepts, relationships and trust that are fundamental to your organization’s success. It will inevitably destroy you and your organization. When words mean whatever someone wants them to mean, it is impossible for your organization to have shared core values.

Critical Race Theory and postmodern thinkers will try to bully you into thinking that they have the only possible solution to issues, but that is false.

Only love, community and shared humanity can bring justice, dignity and truth. That’s the opposite of postmodern thinking. Those are fundamental features of a Wisdom Paradigm understanding of life taught and lived by people like Dr. Martin Luther King.

Do not fall victim to postmodern bullying and engage Critical Race Theory in your organization. Choose a wisdom-based approach to build high-performance teams that tackle difficult problems of racism, sexism and classism.

It is time for us to use love, humanity and logic to fight for objective Truth, Morality, and an America that, while definitely imperfect, uses these facts to seek Justice for all.

For a history of how postmodern thinking developed and how it works, see Wisdom vs. Power: Postmodern Paradigm Part 1.

For a much better alternative to postmodern thinking, see Wisdom vs. Power: Wisdom Paradigm Part 1.

HAPPINESS AND RELATIONSHIP

We’ve got an 80-year Harvard study that says happiness comes from good relationships. There’s a good reason for that.

As human beings, we are biologically wired for relationship. Relationship is a fundamental part of our human nature and DNA.

Having good relationships fulfills our human nature. That’s why good relationships bring happiness. That’s why we thrive when we are in good relationships. As the Harvard study shows, we are healthier, feel better, live longer and are more productive when we are in good relationships.

In contrast, lonely human beings are much more likely to be anxious, depressed, unhealthy and far less productive. Loneliness can shorten a person’s lifespan by 15 years—the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Want to make a prisoner suffer? Put him in solitary confinement and deprive him of relationship.

What is the worst way to bully someone? It’s not yelling at them or even hitting them. The worst way to bully someone is to shun them.

In ancient societies, exile was worse than death because exile cut you off from your relationship with your identity and your tribe.

If you give infants all the food and water they need but don’t give them love and affection, about 40% will die. More than half the surviving infants will have deep psychological challenges.

Why? Because love and affection help shape our neural pathways. When the affection doesn’t happen, the neural pathways don’t get wired correctly.

Our society feels like its breaking down, and anxiety, depression and suicide are skyrocketing because our relationships at every level of society are breaking down.

As humans, we are biologically wired for relationship, especially love.

That’s why good relationships bring fulfillment and happiness.

That’s why good relationships are so important for our personal, family and work success.

All you need for happiness is to focus on having good relationships. Developing good relationships will make you healthier, a better parent at home, a better leader at work, and a better friend to your friends and family.

Life is all about relationships. Everything else is a distraction.

Why doesn’t everyone already know this?

WHY DON’T WE KNOW ABOUT THIS HAPPINESS THING?

The more I talk with Millennials and GenZ, the more convinced I become that no one told them that life is about happiness. It’s not even on their radar screen. When I bring up happiness, things can get a bit awkward.

How would younger generations know about happiness if no one told them?

For thousands of years, people grew up surrounded by their parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and cousins. Cousins were so close that they were often treated like brothers and sisters.

In late 1800’s and early 1900’s America, that was like the Buffalo neighborhood that my Grandma McGuire grew up in. She was born into an Irish-Catholic family around her 12 aunts and uncles, cousins and other Irish-Catholic families—all members of the local Irish-Catholic parish.

Between her parents, aunts and uncles, cousins and the Irish-Catholic families and parish, lessons about the meaning of life were constantly reinforced from every direction. If nothing else, you picked it up by osmosis and habit.

The same was true of many Italian, Jewish, Hispanic, Asian, Polynesian, etc. communities.

Many of those who rejected the religious aspects of those communities would later call themselves cultural Catholics, cultural Jews, etc.

As America grew larger and transportation got better, individual families increasingly left those close community ties, heading west by wagon train, railroads and eventually cars. The Depression and World War II accelerated that migration as people traveled looking for work or settled on the west coast after the war.

America shifted from a time when multi-generational families often lived together to a time in which the focus was on independent nuclear families.

In television show terms, America transitioned from The Walton’s to Leave it to Beaver. The Walton’s was about a three-generational family living together in Appalachia during the Depression. The grandparents were a constant presence.

In contrast, Leave it to Beaver featured a nuclear family, the Cleavers, with other relatives only appearing in about five of 234 episodes.

In general, the change from multi-generational families living in neighborhoods with the same ethnic groups and religions to the nuclear family living comparatively isolated meant that all those lessons about life learned by osmosis faded.

Many younger people—say those born after about 1980—were literally never told that life is about happiness.

My millennial daughter recommended Anne Helen Petersen’s essay “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation” to get a good feel for how many Millennials feel about life—and its bad. You can read my detailed discussion of Petersen’s insights at Millennials: Pursuing Happiness and Avoiding Burnout.

Petersen talks about how parents pushed Millennials to ‘optimize’ themselves to ‘win’ in life. There is a never-ending list of things people are supposed to do. When people get exhausted chasing that list, there is yet another list of things they are supposed to do to avoid the anxiety, burnout, and blues.

The result isn’t satisfaction with life, but burnout and disillusionment.

Petersen writes almost 8,000 words about life and never mentions the word happiness. There is almost no mention of relationships.

The concept of happiness doesn’t even seem to be in her frame of reference.

So, how would Millennials and GenZ know about happiness if their Boomer and GenX parents never told them?

Let’s ask that a different way. If Boomer and GenX parents are disappointed that Millennials and GenZ don’t have a strong understanding of life, the older generations only have themselves to blamed.

After all, we’re the ones who raised them.

Of course, there is much more to the story of how we lost sight of happiness and there are deeper dynamics at work. You can find a more detailed history starting with my piece Wisdom vs. Power: A Brief History.

In our next blog and podcast, we’ll talk about the three fundamental kinds of relationship—contract relationships, power relationships and covenant relationships—and what each of those relationship-types means for happiness and success in life.

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HAPPINESS COMES FROM GOOD RELATIONSHIPS

Harvard University has been conducting the Study on Adult Development for more than 80 years. It includes Harvard undergrads from the 1930’s and disadvantaged Boston youths from the early 1940’s—and their children. The purpose was to find out what makes happy and health lives.

The ongoing study has tracked the lives of thousands of people in over a hundred dimensions including their lifestyle, health, careers, psychology, relationships, and financial success.

The study confirms something you probably already know.

Dr. George Vaillant, who directed the study for more than 30 years, said that “The warmth of relationships throughout life has the greatest positive impact on ‘life satisfaction.’”

In short, Vaillant said, “Happiness is love. Full stop.”

Happiness doesn’t come from money, your education level or your social status.

Happiness comes from good, high-quality relationships.

The Harvard study shows that good relationships don’t just bring happiness. With good relationships, you’ll be healthier, feel better and live years longer.

It is simple. To achieve happiness in life, develop good, strong relationships.

Everything else is a distraction.

WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

What is happiness?

Happiness is a deep satisfaction with life. It is lasting, deep fulfillment. Happiness is the fulfillment of our human nature.

Back in the late 1980’s, I was a young Marine officer learning how to fly jets in south Texas.

A big part of our training was learning how to land on aircraft carriers. You have to fly a very precise, three-dimensional path at exactly the right angle to a small spot on the carrier deck.

If you do it right, the tailhook on your airplane grabs a cable on the deck and you go from 140mph to a full stop in about 2 seconds.

For a year, we practiced carrier landings on runways as part of every flight. Some flights were nothing but practice carrier landings. Every single landing was graded in detail. It was a grueling and often humbling process.

Finally, the day came to fly out to the aircraft carrier to get our carrier landing qualification.

You are alone in your airplane. From 20,000 feet, the aircraft carrier looks like a grain of rice on your kitchen floor.

The pressure is enormous. Your career depends on making the landings. That’s assuming you don’t make a mistake that gets you killed.

The first landing was a blur. You get through the pressure and land on the carrier deck because you’ve practiced it so many times. When you’re under pressure, you fall back on your training, on your habit patterns—an important lesson to remember.

After that first landing, there was an overwhelming feeling of fulfillment. After six landings, there was another overwhelming sense of fulfillment when they told me, over the radio, that I was carrier qualified.

Fulfilled because I fought through fear, stress and uncertainty to pass the test. All that practice and hard work changed me. It changed my relationship with myself.

Fulfilled because we—the students who qualified and the instructors who taught us—accomplished something difficult together. We bonded through that process.

You’ve probably had these moments in life in which we worked really hard for something, accomplished it, and felt fulfilled. It could be a lot of things like:

Getting a well-deserved promotion or professional certification

Climbing a mountain

Running a long-distance goal race

Having kids that grow into good people.

Achieving a goal weight

Ending substance abuse

Completing a big hobby or household project

The more difficult the challenge, the more you suffer to achieve it, the more fulfilling it is.

Easy wins aren’t as meaningful or fulfilling. Tough wins are.

Often, fulfillment comes from just spending time with people that you love. Late night college discussions. Walks on the beach. Having a meal together. Hanging out with someone you’re interested in. Watching a movie with your spouse and kids. Telling stories and reminiscing. Laughing together.

Then there’s the fulfillment that comes when we combine the challenges with the relationships and achieve things together. Winning the league championship. Raising great kids with your spouse. Helping a friend build a backyard deck. Getting together to help others in need. Supporting a friend who is going through tough times.

How often do we hear people receiving awards say, “I couldn’t have done this without help from…”?

Sometimes when I tackle a challenge alone, I forget that I’m really doing it in relationship with myself.

While we all seek fulfillment and happiness, we take different paths—according to our talents and interests—to get there. Some will pursue fulfillment using their talents as physicians, businesspeople or public servants. Others will pursue happiness through service as teachers, artists, ministers or parents. Still others will find fulfillment in their interests like gardening, wood-working, sports, food and other activities.

Happiness is the deep, long-lasting fulfillment, satisfaction, and contentment with what you have achieved and who you have become in life. It might be hard to capture with words, but you know it when you feel it.

Finally, some people prefer to use the word joy instead of happiness for the deep fulfillment we’re talking about. That is ok. We’re describing the same deep experience, just using different words. For our purposes, we’ll use happiness to mean long-term fulfillment.

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Life can be intense, fast-paced, and complicated.

Everywhere you turn, there’s pressure to be successful.

At work, we’re supposed to have cool jobs that pay well, and are socially relevant and fulfilling. We’re supposed to be ambitious, enthusiastic leaders moving quickly up the career ladder.

As parents, we are supposed to get our kids into the best schools, and ranked programs for sports or dance or music—or all three simultaneously. We’re supposed to be a good room-parent and coach while pursuing that successful career and finding kid-time. We are judged by the prestige of the colleges our kids attend, the scholarships they receive and the jobs they get after graduation.

In our community, we are supposed to fix injustice around the world, express the right opinions, live in the right neighborhoods, drive the right cars, and eat the chic foods at trending restaurants.

When we get exhausted chasing so many things, there is yet another list of things we’re supposed to do to de-stress like meditation, breathing exercises, cross-fit, “me-time”….

We are supposed to post all this on social media with smiling faces to broadcast our success and, I suspect, reassure ourselves that we are doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

No one asks if we want to do these things.

We are never told why we are supposed to do these things. There is just an implicit promise that if we achieve all these things something good will happen.

But no matter how many things we accomplish, that good thing never arrives.

If you feel overwhelmed, exhausted or burned out trying to keep up with it all, you’re not alone.

We have more education, wealth, and technology than ever in human history, and yet people feel more anxious and depressed than ever.

There is an alternative.

Let’s stop chasing endless lists of supposed-to-do’s and choose happiness.

It is that simple. Deep down, you already knew this.

Life is about happiness, fulfillment.

Science is clear about what makes us happy in life: good relationships. If you have good relationships, you will be happier, healthier and live longer.

So how do you get good relationships? Practice these Three Virtues:

Seek Wisdom because the more people trust your knowledge and character, the better your relationships.

Practice Love because the more people know that you care about them, the more committed your relationships.

Get Results because the more people know that—even under pressure—you can make the basket, close the deal, complete the project or properly arrange your daughter’s hair-bun before ballet class, the better your relationships.

There are three areas in life where you can practice these virtues. They include your relationships with:

Yourself

Family and friends

People at work and in the community

Your relationship with yourself is the foundation for all your other relationships. Be strong with yourself so you can be strong for others.

Good relationships with your family and friends ensure you will be there for each other during the greatest joys and toughest challenges of life.

At work, if you have good relationships with your people, they will be more engaged and productive. If you have good relationships with your clients, they will give your more work.

If you combine more work and more productivity, you will increase performance and have a big advantage whether you are a business, non-profit, public service or military. It may be counter-intuitive, but you’ll make more money focusing on good relationships than if you focus on making money itself).

Strong relationships in your community give you the best opportunity to work with others—even when you disagree—to make your community stronger, safer and more just.

Your life is really the story of how you pursue relationships with yourself, with family and friends, and at work and in your community. Your story interwoven with all of their stories.

Hopefully, your story is one of finding happiness in good relationships instead of experiencing burnout chasing endless lists of supposed-to-do’s.

Happiness, relationship, story—everything else is a distraction.

That’s the core of it.

Stayed tune for the next post where we'll talk more about happiness!

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By Pete Bowen and Bailey Bowen

SON OF A SHARECROPPER

In mid-February—just two months and a lifetime ago—my wife and I were in her hometown of Dothan, Alabama, for her high school reunion and to spend time with her father.

My father-in-law is the son of a sharecropper without much formal education. He grew up in one of the very poorest areas of the US, his bedroom the covered porch of a country house. He became a union pipe-fitter working at paper mills and nuclear power plants.

His wife had a good job working for the state. My in-laws owned their own home, had several businesses over the years, and even bought a brand-new Cadillac. In the 1970’s, that meant that you had accomplished something.

More important than any of that, they had a strong marriage and very good friends and they were happy.

My mother-in-law passed almost exactly 3 years ago. Hundreds came to her funeral not from obligation, but from love and respect.

My father-in-law misses her deeply, but he carries on, day-to-day, supported by and supportive of all those friends.

He’s a guy who will drive 10 hours to help you change a car tire—whether he’s met you or not.

WAFFLE HOUSE: WISDOM AND CONTEMPT

We visit Dothan a couple times a year and we always make it a point to have at least one meal at the Waffle House around the corner. It’s been a thing for 30 years.

So, in mid-February, we’re having a midnight breakfast at the Waffle House. We have the privilege of being served by Shea, a young woman who is working 3rd shift to cover for a co-worker. Shea always fills my coffee cup at exactly the right moment—often coming from across the room.

“How do you always know when I need coffee?” I ask.

“I can tell by the angle you hold the cup when you drink,” she tells me.

Maybe that’s something that all servers know. Maybe she figured out on her own. Either way, I respect her wisdom and am better for listening to it.

When many of my friends, comfortable in the economic top 10% of America, found out I eat at Waffle House, they looked at me like I’m crazy.

 

They wouldn’t be caught dead at a Waffle House. Ever.

Wrong kind of food. Wrong kind of people.

A few years ago, a friend group passed around an online quiz that analyzed you based on where you’ve eaten. Applebees and Chilis and similar restaurants were on the list. They mocked the restaurants and the “type of people” who eat at them.

THE 9.9% AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY

Many of us are firmly embedded, by our wealth and attitude, in what Matthew Stewart called the American Aristocracy in his essay The 9.9 Percent is the New American Aristocracy from The Atlantic.

Stewart differentiates the top .01% of ultra-rich Americans from the 9.9% of the rising American Aristocracy from the 90% of the rest of Americans. A major point of the essay is that the 90% have very little opportunity or hope of rising into the new, 9.9% aristocracy.

According to Stewart—and I think he has this right—the top 9.9% see themselves as “meritocratic winners” with attitudes of “its good to be us” and “we’re crushing the competition below.”

They have “mastered the old trick of consolidating their wealth and privilege, and passing it along to their kids.”

While I think Stewart gets some conclusions wrong, his data about and description of the 9.9% American Aristocracy are compelling. Stewart says that we, the American Aristocrats, have locked in, for ourselves, huge advantages in education, jobs, family stability, neighborhood and health.

We’re smarter. We’re richer. We have more prestigious jobs and a much lower divorce rate. We live in better neighborhoods and go to better schools. We’re better people because, well, look at what we’ve accomplished.

We spend our time talking only to the right people (that’s us) with the right attitudes about the right topics in the right restaurants. It becomes an echo chamber where we know that we are right because all the other educated people like us agree with us.

It makes us deeply condescending, self-absorbed, pretentious and dismissive.

When many young people in the 90% say that the way of life we taught them leaves them unfulfilled, burned out and anxious, we don’t bother to listen. We just dismiss them as snowflakes and crazy socialists.

When others in the 90% say that they disagree with social agendas we push, it never even occurs to us to listen or discuss. We simply tell them how they should think and, if they don’t, we dismiss them as bigots or traitors or just stupid.

Through this, we send a very strong message to the 90%: Shut up. We don’t care about you.

It never occurs to us highly-educated aristocrats that they might have a point.

It never occurs to us that we might be deeply infected with confirmation or bandwagon biases.

Worst of all, it never occurs to us to actively listen to them because we love them as brothers and sisters in America.

We do the opposite. We dehumanize them.

We call them ignorant. Bigots. Snowflakes. Fascists. Socialists. And much more.

Dehumanizing them not only means we don’t have to talk to them. It means we shouldn’t talk to them.

We don’t call their opposition disagreement because that implies that it might be worthy of discussion.

We call their opposition resentment because resentment is an immature, unreasonable emotion of the less-educated. You don’t respond to resentment. You ignore it.

When you stop to think about it, our arrogance is stunning.

We see ourselves as compassionate people seeking to help the disadvantaged.

In reality, we treat the 90% like lesser beings who are told what to do and how to think.

If they get in line, we toss them a treat.

If they don’t get in line, we crush them by shouting them down, shaming them, getting them fired, taking their kids and dehumanizing them by calling them terrible names.

Best of all, crushing them makes us feel good and virtuous.

We aristocrats might be highly-educated, but we don’t have the wisdom to understand that treating our fellow Americans this way is profoundly un-American.

We don’t have the wisdom to understand that our hypocritical, arrogant, self-absorbed and dehumanizing behavior will lead us away from the very leadership, solutions and teamwork we need to solve the Covid-19 and future crisis.

We don’t have the compassion to be sensitive to how we destroy lives.

The Covid-19 crisis is really bad. It is killing tens of thousands of our fellow Americans and costing us trillions of dollars.

Worse is what this Covid-19 crisis reveals about the deeply unhealthy dynamics in our American society.

SOLUTIONS

Obviously, these dynamics are ripping our nation apart.

So, how do we solve this?

Matthew Stewart argues that we need to use the federal government to change education, family-social and other systems to increase real opportunity for the 90%.

Fixing systems is a start, but I think that solution misses the most important problem and point.

Fixing the systems isn’t enough. Change the system whatever way you want. Educated, entitled American Aristocrats will game the new system just as they gamed the old. We’ll just find a new way to funnel contributions to get our kids in elite colleges.

The real problem is us. Real change only occurs when we change—as individuals. That means you and me.

What does that look like?

First, we need to remember that America is fundamentally different from other nations in history.

In other nations, the smarter, wealthier, aristocratic elites rule because they are the elites. All lower classes are the subjects of their rule like a peasant is the subject of the king. In this citizen-subject approach, the elites know best and everyone else gets in line.

In America, “We the people” are the leaders of our nation. We are, by design, citizen-leaders, not citizen-subjects.

Leadership is not some activity done by a group of specialists called “leaders”. In America, we are all called to be leaders of our own lives, our families, our workplaces—and our communities.

That means that all of us—the .1%, the 9.9% and the 90%--have the responsibility to become the best leaders we can. We have the responsibility to help our fellow Americans become good leaders too.

Citizen-leadership is at the very core of what it means to be an American.

Second, to become good leaders, we must seek wisdom.

Wisdom is the combination of knowledge and good character. When you know the truth and live the truth over and over, you gain wisdom about life.

Knowledge-in-wisdom helps us identify the best solutions for our nation.

Character-in-wisdom enables us to develop the trust across generations and economic classes that we need for teamwork and success.

Most important, it takes wisdom to understand our real purpose in life—Happiness—that comes from good relationships, not money or education or social status.

With that wisdom, we avoid greed, pretentiousness and condescension because they inevitably pit us against each other, destroying relationship, Happiness and success.

That’s the great life lesson I’ve learned from my father-in-law who doesn’t have much formal education, but has wisdom, strong relationships and Happiness.

Third, we must practice love.

We become what we practice. When you practice lifting weights, you become stronger. When you practice running sprints, you become faster.

The more you do anything, the more it becomes a habit and a fundamental part of your character.

Every time we demonize someone—no matter how much they might deserve it—the more it changes us for the worse. The more dehumanization gets ingrained in our being.

Every time we think we’re fundamentally better than someone else, the more arrogant we become and the easier it is to dehumanize.

These things destroy the trust and relationships we need for Happiness. They destroy the trust and teamwork we need to succeed as Ameri

By Pete Bowen and Bailey Bowen

I learned a few important lessons last week that some might find helpful.

On March 17, government-ordered Covid-19 shutdowns reduced my consulting business income to $0 overnight.

The same week, two of my three daughters were laid off from their jobs.

At the time, we were told that the shutdown would be a couple weeks. It would be tough and painful, but we would get through it.

Though I had no income, we had enough savings to go 6 months on a bare-bones budget.

Besides, the government promised help for businesses like mine to get through it all.

I applied for unemployment and tried to apply for the PPP loans the government promised.

We weren’t too concerned. We felt comfortable that our savings could carry us past the crisis.

Then the shutdown kept getting extended. First to a month. Then 8-12 weeks.

At the same time, the government promises started falling flat.

As a sole-owner LLC, I had to wait until Friday, April 10, to apply for a PPP loan. I didn’t get access to an online application until Tuesday night, April 15th.

By then, however, the PPP money was already gone.

Unemployment? I got denied for several reasons including that I had “excessive earnings” of $145 one week when I took a 35-minute client phone call.

We are genuinely grateful for the $2,400 federal money we did receive. Here in Orange County, California, that’s about 10 days of living expenses for a family of four at the low-income level.

Then the shutdown kept getting longer. Three months, then six months and now maybe 12-18 months.

Last week, we realized that our savings are going to run out long before our political leaders tell us the economy will reopen.

Government ordered shutdowns took away all our income.

There is no PPP money for us. No EIDL money. No unemployment money. No business income for as long as a year.

We’re in trouble. We have to compete with 25 million other Americans to find jobs that generate a combined $50 an hour for us to make the low-income level.

My family is not alone in this.

A school-teacher/hairdresser friend of mine is already part of a rising black market economy. She’s a long-term substitute teacher who is only getting $800/month in unemployment because her UI base rate was too low as a substitute teacher.

How is she going to make her $2,000 rent on May 1? How is she going to buy food?

If you were in her situation, would you cut people’s hair in their homes despite the government guidelines?

A good friend owns an OC tourism business. It looks like they are approved for PPP money and they are grateful. It will help them get by through the end of June.

The problem is that Disneyland may not re-open until August or September.

There is no apparent mechanism by which they can last through August—much less September or October—which is how long it will take for them to get their business back up. If they go out of business, it will be very difficult for them to restart it.

The wife of another friend beat stage 4 cancer two years ago. With a compromised immune system, she is high risk for Covid-19. Nevertheless, she is working in a grocery store because their fear of Covid-19 is outweighed by their need for the income.

These are all educated, upper-middle class people running successful businesses until the government shutdowns ended their work.

All of us have been willing to make big personal and professional sacrifices to help address this terrible pandemic.

But when politicians blithely talk about shutdowns lasting 6 or 12 or 18 months, and government help lasts 2.5 months or doesn’t come at all, you are hit in the face with a new reality.

Our six months of savings went from more-than-covering-the-shutdown to it’s-going-to-fall-way-short.

How am I going to feed and house my family when our savings run out?

My friends whose companies received millions in PPP loans explain to me, with some condescension, that they are sorry I’m in this spot, but this is all necessary to keep the pandemic down.

The message comes across as, “If you just understood how important all of this is, you wouldn’t feel this way.” You know, you just need to get more informed. You need to adjust your thinking.

Then they spend most of their energy and time fighting over whose fault this is.

In the beginning of April, I thought largely the same way. I had a path to get through this.

With six months of savings and promises of government help, I was socially-distanced from the impact of shutting down our economy.

Now that the government promises have fallen flat and my path appears to come up short, my Marine Corps response to them is “Are you shitting me?”

Lesson One: I was reminded that as much as I think I understand the pain of others, there is a big difference when I’m actually in it.

That leads to…

Lesson Two: The top 10% of this nation—that’s you and me—are over-confident, self-absorbed and smug. We are highly educated, but lack wisdom.

We’ve got degrees from prestigious universities, where we benefited less from what we learned and more from the resulting social status and connections.

We value pure intellectual knowledge over wisdom, and we are the worse for it.

We are over-confident and smug. We don’t listen to people who disagree with us to see if we can learn something. Instead, we attack them because disagreement means they are either stupid or evil.

We are self-absorbed. Bad things happen to other people, not us.

None of these traits are wise or helpful when we need to come together to tackle this crisis.

I didn’t understand the impact of shutting down the economy until I felt the impact on me. I got an important lesson in humility.

My CEO-friends who got millions in PPP money are blind to the possibility that they are just a few months behind me. Even when that possibility is put explicitly before them.

When you feel safe financially, it’s easy to be insensitive to what’s happening to tens of millions of our brothers and sisters throughout America. It’s easy to lecture them about how the shutdown is so much more important than the economy.

Nationally, we’ve got at least 68 million families with 100 million people who live paycheck to paycheck.

We have 25 million unemployed in America.

In Los Angeles County, only 45% of the residents have jobs.

Now, instead of thinking about try to emotionally feel the following: The PPP money your law firm or business received just ran out.

All your clients called in the last few days and said they can’t pay their bills. You have zero receivables.

You have just 3 weeks of personal money for your family’s expenses.

You need $7,000/month in Southern California to survive at the low-income level. You’re receiving $800/month in unemployment.

Political leaders nonchalantly mention that the shutdown will go for 6-12 months, so you have little hope of work until October. Maybe.

May 1 is coming. Are you going to spend your $800 on food or to offset your $2,000 rent? We haven’t even talked about your electricity or heat or water or phone or insurance bills.

Now that you have a few weeks of food—you’ll always spend your money on food before rent—how are you going to do this again on June 1 and again on July 1?

Even if you got your job back tomorrow, you won’t get a full paycheck for at least 3 weeks.

If you really faced the problem of not having enough money to feed or house your family, how would you feel and what would you do?

I learned last week that the gap between where you are right now and the scenario above is much smaller than I knew.

Our leaders—that’s you and me—have little sense of what tens of millions of people are going through as you read this.

With government paychecks and contracts and PPP money, we blithely lecture 100 million people that they must risk homelessness and hunger to stay safe from a virus that has a 2% mortality rate.

To those without jobs, it looks a lot like burning down the village to save it.

That brings us to Lesson Three: Wisdom demands honest, good-faith discussion and decision-making about the whole problem, not just one part of the problem.

Every day, we have detailed briefings by hundreds of government leaders on the intricacies of the pandemic and our medical response and models and…

That is all 10-out-of-10, 110%, very important.

Comparatively, we get almost no discussion about the daily struggles of 100 million of our American brothers and sisters as they try to avoid hunger and homelessness.

Where are the daily briefings with charts and statistics and models on how the shutdown is impacting our brothers and sisters? Where is the detailed planning to get them back to work?

We—the politicians and top 10%--are in a relatively comfortable position. We’re not facing hunger or homelessness, so their struggles are just not that important.

We focus on what we do feel: fear that if the hospitals are swamped with Covid19 patients, we might not get the treatment we want for a heart attack.

That’s what’s real to us.

Besides, we threw money at the unemployed. We checked that box. Now it’s time to lecture them about how important it is to us for them to stay isolated.

About how disappointed we are if they do raise their voice and complain.

We’ve never invited them into our discussion. We’ve never asked what they think. We’ve never actively listened to them or tried to feel what they’re going through.

Why would we listen? We’re more educated than they are. We know more.

A wise and honest approach would actively listen to everyone. It would pay as much attention to what our 100 million are going through as it does on what our hospitals are going through.

It would focus on balancing the real trade-offs between health risks, hunger and homelessness.

It would end the incessant demonizing and fighting between polit

Welcome back to our series, Wisdom and Love vs. Postmodern Power. We’ve been talking about why we have so much conflict in our society and unhappiness in our lives.

In this session, we’ll discuss postmodern ideas about relationships, power, rules, freedom and how we develop the young.

Remember the three keys to understanding the Postmodern Paradigm:

There is no Truth or Morality or facts. Everything in life is In-the-Eye-of-the-Beholder.

There is no purpose or meaning in Life.

All that matters is Power. All relationships are power relationships.

Communities, Leaders and Power

In postmodern thinking, since there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, the only thing that matters is power.

Some people have power.

Other people don’t have power.

Those with more power prevail over those with less power.

There are lots of ways to gain and use power.

Power can be something as obvious and crude as threatening or killing someone.

Power can be something as nuanced as using schools to program toddlers the way you want them to think.

Power gets exercised through the government, justice system, financial system, the education system, the media, churches, advertising, fashion and internet search results.

Power gets exercised by what questions are asked and not asked, and how those questions are structured to emphasize certain viewpoints and de-emphasize others.

The deepest power is in the hands of those who control the social construct programming.

Marriage and family may appear to be about love, but they are nothing more than a social construct that controls power in a relationship.

The husband has power over the wife. Parents have power over their children.

The Wisdom Paradigm says that all relationships are fundamentally covenant relationships where the good of the individual and team are the same.

The Modern Paradigm says all relationships are fundamentally contract relationships. What is good for the worker is bad for the company—and vice-versa.

In the Postmodern Paradigm, all relationships—no matter how they appear on the surface—are nothing more than power relationships.

Imagine that a person goes into a school and massacres 50 children.

In the Wisdom Paradigm, it is a fact that the massacre is evil.

In postmodern thinking, while people might really dislike the massacre, there is nothing objectively wrong with the massacre.

Society values security from massacres. The killer values killing people. One value isn’t factually better than the other. They’re just different values.

When the police capture the killer and the state puts him on trial, the state doesn’t do it because they are objectively right and the killer wrong.

The state does it because they are exercising power over the killer just as the killer exercised power over the children he murdered.

In the Postmodern Paradigm, the police may say that the massacre was “unjust” or “evil”, but that is just using the power of rhetoric to publish a narrative to program people to think their way.

If you are a cunning leader, you get control of the schools, the media, the churches and other influential aspects of life, and use them to program the social constructs of the rest of society.

If you can achieve that, then you don’t need to use much violence to keep control.

You keep the people under control by convincing them, perhaps through religious beliefs, education and media campaigns, that it is a fact that (insert desired belief or behavior) is  “right” and it’s a fact that (insert undesired belief or behavior) is wrong.

As a postmodern leader, you understand that people really don’t want to know the nature of reality. They don’t want to know that there is no purpose or meaning. It is too terrible and depressing. They would rather live under the illusion that life has meaning and will embrace the leader that gives them that illusion.

The bottom line about relationships in the Postmodern Paradigm: It is all about power.

The Postmodern Paradigm calls us to understand life in terms of who has power, who doesn’t have power, and how power is exercised by the powerful over the weak.

This is where the concept of empowerment comes from.

Some people and groups have power. They are oppressors.

Others do not have power. They are the oppressed.

So, we empower the oppressed to challenge the power structures that oppress them and we call it social justice and that’s a narrative that sounds nice and makes us feel good.

And in the Postmodern Paradigm, making people feel good or “just” about what they’re doing is a great way to use your power to get them to do what you want.

Of course, in the Postmodern Paradigm, there’s nothing actually better about empowering people rather than oppressing them.

Oppression is when others have power over you.

Justice is when you have power over others.

Life is About Choosing Your Own Destination for Your Own Reasons

In the Postmodern Paradigm, we’re so deeply programmed with social constructs that it’s impossible to fully escape that programming.

Nevertheless, if we can become aware of the programming and social constructs, maybe we can “deconstruct” them and gain some freedom to make our own choices about life.

Postmodern thinkers try to deconstruct every aspect of life—especially art, law, literature, sociology, psychology, theology and criminal justice.

Since postmodern thinkers believe that human nature is programmable, there is no deep or transcendent meaning or purpose in life.

You get to define whatever meaning or purpose you want. You might choose saving the world or maximizing pleasure or killing people for fun as your purpose.

All are morally equivalent.

No choice is better or worse than any others.

Except, perhaps, that the purpose you choose is better than the others because it is your choice.

Rules and Freedom

How does the Postmodern Paradigm treat the concepts of rules and freedom?

Remember that in the Wisdom and Modern Paradigms, rules guide us and help us get better at things faster than we could trying to figure them out on our own.

In the Postmodern Paradigm, rules play a very different role. Rules are a very powerful social construct that others use to get you to do what they want.

Those in power program you with their rules for music so you play music their way.

They program you with their rules for raising a family so that you raise your family their way.

They program you with their rules for etiquette and social interaction and sex and [insert any human behavior] so that you do each of those things their way.

In the postmodern way of understanding life, rules are one of the most powerful ways that they can program and control you.

Let’s look at freedom.

In the Wisdom Paradigm, as we all travel the road to Happiness, we need freedom to pursue the Truth.

In the Postmodern Paradigm, the word freedom has a very different meaning. There is no Truth, so freedom to pursue the Truth doesn’t make any sense.

Freedom means freedom from the social constructs that the powerful have used to program you. If you can deconstruct those constructs, you might gain some freedom from the programming and make your own choices.

Freedom from the programmed social constructs can take many forms.

In postmodern art, beauty is in-the-eye-of-the-beholder, so art is about showing others that you are freely choosing your own way for your own reasons.

Putting a Christian crucifix in a jar of urine is meant to shock people and demonstrate that the “artist” is free from the social constructs of Christianity and the community.

That tells us a lot about rules in the Postmodern Paradigm.

Your rules are good because they express your power over other people.

Other people’s rules are bad because they give others power over you.

That is why rules are made to be broken.

The best way to demonstrate your own freedom and purpose is by breaking the rules.

In the Postmodern Paradigm, freedom is a radical freedom to choose your own purpose, your own meaning, for your own reasons.

It is freedom to reject becoming good as just another social construct programmed into you by others.

Freedom to choose to become whatever you want.

Freedom to pursue whatever you desire in whatever way you desire.

Developing Young People

In the Wisdom Paradigm, formation is the process used to develop knowledge, character and wisdom in young people so they can be successful in life.

In the Modern Paradigm, education is the process used to emphasize academic development in young people.

In both formation and education, pursuit of the Truth is an important goal.

Postmodern thinking, however, rejects the idea of objective Truth, so the formation or education of young people doesn’t make sense.

In contrast, the Postmodern Paradigm develops young people through indoctrination. Those in power use indoctrination to program the social constructs in whatever way they desire.

Postmodern Wrap Up

Those who understand and embrace postmodern thinking understand it simply as recognition and acceptance of the way reality really is.

There is no objective Truth, only personal truth.

No moral facts, just personal morality.

No transcendent Beauty or Justice.

No logic or reason or facts. Just narrative.

No meaning or purpose in life.

Everything is in the eye-of-the-beholder.

The only thing that matters is Power.

Everything we have been taught about life is nothing more than social constructs we have been programmed to believe by those in power—those who control the schools and churches and government and media and….

If you can deconstruct your social programming, perhaps you can gain a bit of freedom to choose your own meaning and purpose for yourself.

But no purpose that you choose is any better or worse than any other purpose,...

Welcome back to our blog series Wisdom and Love vs. Postmodern Power. We’ve been talking about why we have so much conflict in our society and unhappiness in our lives.

The primary reason is that we have three conflicting understandings of life at work in society.

It’s like trying to play a game of basketball-football-golf. I call it basket-foot-golf.

The conflicting rules make it impossible to combine them into a single game. It will inevitably lead to conflict and deep frustration.

Are you supposed to move the ball forward by dribbling or running or using a club?

What is the proper club selection on 3rd down from the free throw line?

Do you win by scoring the most points or the fewest strokes?

Basket-foot-golf is a metaphor, of course, for the three understandings of life in conflict in our society—the Wisdom Paradigm, Modern Paradigm and Postmodern Paradigm.

Review of the Wisdom Paradigm

As we discussed in earlier blogs, the Wisdom Paradigm is the way all the world’s great religions and philosophies have thought about life for thousands of years.

The Wisdom Paradigm teaches that all people have the same human nature and purpose in life—Happiness.

A big, 80-year, ongoing Harvard study confirms something we already know. Happiness in life comes from high-quality relationships. Good relationships won’t just make you happier; you’ll also be healthier and live longer.

Knowing that our purpose in life is Happiness, reason tells us what we need to do to get there.

The Wisdom Paradigm says that all relationships are covenant relationships. In covenant relationships, the good of the individual and the good of the team are the same. Covenant relationships are high-trust, high-performance, high-stability relationships.

The Wisdom Paradigm teaches that there is an objective morality with moral facts.

For example, it is a fact that practicing moral virtues like courage, wisdom, honesty, justice and love help us develop good relationships that bring Happiness.

It is also a fact that practicing moral vices like addiction, cowardice and dishonesty destroy relationships and will inevitably lead to unhappiness.

Rise and Fall of the Modern Paradigm

In Europe in the 1500’s and 1600’s, however, things began to change. Religious wars were tearing Europe apart. Different Christian religions had conflicting versions of what Salvation—Happiness—was and different ways to get there.

The religious wars were brutal. Thinkers of the time responded by creating a whole new way of understanding life—the Modern Paradigm.

These new, modern thinkers needed to find a way to get people to live together without killing each other over religion. So, they split life into public life and private life.

Then they put our destination in life, Happiness, into the private side so that we stopped fighting about it publicly.

That helped with the religious fighting, but it created other problems.

When it came to morality, modern thinkers had to come up with a new way to justify objective morality with moral facts. They tried to do that using reason alone. As we’ll see again, that attempt created some big problems.

Modern thinkers also redefined human relationships from covenant relationships into contract relationships.

In contract relationships, what’s good for the individual and team are opposite.

That’s a big change.

For example, in the relationship between an employee and a company, the employee wants more money for less work, while the company wants more work while paying less money.

Contract relationships end up being low-trust, low-performance and unstable relationships.

Finally, remember that the Modern Paradigm is a whole new way of looking at life, so it impacted every aspect of society including art, literature, education, religion, work, music, government and politics—everything.

The Rise of Postmodern Thinking

During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, it became clear that the Modern Paradigm’s attempts to establish an objective morality and Truth and facts were failing.

Philosophers like Nietzsche wrote books like The Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil.

When it comes to family, genealogy is the study of your family’s history.

Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals did the same thing with morality. It described the failure of modern philosophers to prove that there are moral facts.

This failure wasn’t just limited to moral facts. It also failed to prove that there is objective Truth, facts, or justice.

That meant it was time to go Beyond [the old categories of] Good and Evil and embrace a new, postmodern reality where there is no objective Truth or Morality or Justice.

Postmodern thinkers argued that all the categories that society teaches us are facts about life—like the existence of Good and Evil—are false.

They are just social constructs that we’ve been programmed to believe by our parents, media, schools, churches, government, etc.

In the Postmodern Paradigm, there is no objective Truth only your personal truth. No objective Morality, just your personal morality. There are no facts, just what you feel.

We began to see life through the postmodern lens of everything-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder.

This new postmodern reality changes how we think about every aspect of society including family, human nature, art, language, work, law, philosophy, theology, education, government, music, architecture, science, health, etc.

There is no deeper purpose or meaning in life, just whatever purpose or meaning you make for yourself.

With no objective Truth, Morality, Justice or purpose in life, all that really matters is Power. Postmodern thinking sees all relationships as power relationships.

Three Keys to Remember about Postmodern Thinking

These are the three keys to understanding the Postmodern Paradigm:

There is no Truth or Morality or facts. Everything in life is In-the-Eye-of-the-Beholder.

There is no purpose or meaning in Life.

All that matters is Power. All relationships are power relationships.

Over the last 120 years, European and American society has slowly become postmodern.

History of Postmodern Influence

Nietzsche was still relatively unknown when he died in 1900, but his writings and ways of thinking became increasingly influential in universities through the 1920’s.

Europe and America were recovering from World War I. It was a horrible and wasteful war that killed millions through modern technology like the machine gun and poison gas. World War I was a war between nations at the apex of the Modern Paradigm that destroyed an entire generation of young men, and millions of women and children.

The incredible death, destruction and loss caused people to lose confidence in the Modern Paradigm. It created fertile ground for postmodern thinking to take root in universities in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Postmodern thinkers made it their mission to directly challenge and overthrow the social constructs, the rules, of modern society that led to this carnage.

The incredible horrors of World War II, the Holocaust and the hydrogen bomb undermined trust in older institutions—especially in Europe—and added momentum to postmodern thinking.

You can do the math and figure out that those going through college in the 1920’s (about 20 years old) became the leaders of higher education by the 1960’s.

As these postmodern thinkers took over the colleges and universities, they hired several generations of other postmodern thinkers to fill the humanities departments in universities.

Thinkers like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis wrote books like The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia in opposition to this rising postmodern thinking in universities.

Today, over 90% of college professors in the humanities embrace elements of postmodern thinking. Postmodern thinking dominates the humanities.

Let’s dive deeper.

Human Nature is Programmable

The Wisdom Paradigm teaches that human nature is the same across cultures and throughout history. That’s why today we can read and share experiences of love, betrayal and courage across the ages and across cultures.

In the Wisdom Paradigm, your purpose in life is to achieve Happiness by fulfilling your human nature.

In contrast, the Postmodern Paradigm teaches that human nature is not a constant. Human nature is the product of social programming. Human nature can be changed by programming people with different social constructs.

The idea that there are differences between men and women? Nothing more than a social construct.

The idea that human beings are a special species on the planet? Nothing more than a social construct.

Justice?

Morality?

Love?

Family?

Happiness?

Nothing deeper or transcendent about any of these. They are nothing more than social constructs.

You don’t believe them because they are true. You believe them because that’s how you’ve been programmed.

The postmodern argument is that none of these constructs are objectively true or real, but simply our own made-up understandings.

It goes further. Postmodern thinking rejects reason and logic as ways to prove facts or Truth. Reason and logic are also just social constructs that those in power use to program you.

That’s why postmodern thinking emphasizes narrative. A narrative is not a collection of facts. A narrative is simply a collection of ideas arranged to talk you into agreeing with those in power.

No objective Truth, just personal truth. No objective morality, just your personal morality.

Postmodern thinking rejects reason, logic and facts for narrative.

Everything is in the eye-of-the-beholder.

Truth and Beauty: In the Eye of the Beholder

In postmodern thinking, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

That means that when you say that the Grand Canyon is beautiful, you’re not recognizing something deep or transcendent in the Grand Canyon....

We’re in tough times right now.

Two of my three daughters were laid off last Friday.

After a well-worded inquiry, my oldest daughter avoided a lay off and transitioned to a new role in her company. Manager of the 3rd shift disinfecting team.

My mother is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, and inaccessible in her board and care. The good news is that she doesn’t know what’s going on. The bad news is that I may have held her hand for the last time.

My 84-year-old father is in isolation in his apartment. I talk to him daily now—that’s a new thing—but only see him once a week to deliver his groceries.

My corporate clients are focused—rightfully so—on the critical issue of how to survive given the coronavirus. As a self-employed business leadership consultant, I’m not generating any income.

Tough times are, by definition, tough. They’re hard. It’s painful. It sucks while we’re in the middle of it.

In the long run, though, we’ll get through this.

We’re America. That’s what we do. We use tough times to become better as individuals and as a nation. I trust our nation. I trust our style of government.

Most of all, I trust the American people. I trust you.

We’ll use our strength, our grit, our determination and our ingenuity. We won’t just get through this crisis. We’ll get better from it.

When we’re under stress, we revert back to our habit patterns. That’s why our military trains so hard—to develop habit patterns. When the bullets are flying, we go back to our training—our habits.

That’s why character is so important. Character is really the accumulation of all your habit patterns.

These tough times are an opportunity to get better at life through better thinking and better habit patterns.

When things are good, we tend to coast through life without thinking much. That’s natural. When things are going well, why reflect much on things?

Tough times force us to stop. To think. Why are things bad? What’s not working?

Deeper, what is important in life that we need to prioritize? What isn’t that important that we can drop?

Tough times get us to reflect on the meaning of life, on where we’re headed and why.

Tough times are also an opportunity to strengthen our habit patterns to develop the character needed to tackle adversity and take advantage of opportunity.

When we combine good thinking and good habits, we develop wisdom. Wisdom is the knowledge about life that makes us Happier and more successful in life.

More specifically, wisdom is the combination of knowledge and character. When you know the truth—that’s the thinking part—and live the truth—that’s the habit and character part—you develop wisdom.

If you seek wisdom, when tough times hit again, you’ll know what needs to be done, and you’ll have the courage and discipline to get it done.

Tough times are an opportunity to develop the wisdom we need to be Happier and more successful in all aspects of life—at work and with our families.

So, what do we need to think about? What truth do we need to know about life?

We get so caught up in life that its easy to lose sight of what’s really important.

When I ask people what life is about, or ask about meaning or purpose in life, most people don’t know what to say. We don’t talk about it.

We spend all this time and energy and our lives doing things without knowing why.

Younger people have been told to chase a whole list of things in life—from competing for the right schools and sports teams to getting the perfect job and solving all the world’s problems—and then they often get burned and lose trust in the system. That’s unfair to them

What is life all about? How do we know what’s important and not?

It’s simple. Life is about Happiness. Fulfillment.

Where do we find Happiness? How can we get it?

According to an 80-year, ongoing Harvard Study on Adult Development, happiness comes from high quality relationships. You won’t just be happier. You’ll be healthier and live longer.

What do we need to do to have great relationships?

It’s simple again. Great relationships are high-trust relationships.

There are three virtues that build great, high-trust, high-performance relationships:

Seek Wisdom: The more people trust your knowledge—about your work and life—and the more they trust your character, the better your relationship.

Practice Love: We all have people who’ve made huge impacts in our lives—usually because they took the time to love and care about us. The more people know that you love them, the stronger your relationships.

Get Results: The more people know that you’ll make the shot, close the deal, finish the project, be there for them in tough times—the better your relationship.

So, let’s take these tough times as an opportunity to get back to the basics of life.

To filter out all the distractions in life and get back to what really matters.

Happiness. Fulfillment. Great relationships.

Let’s seek wisdom, practice love and get results. That will give us the knowledge, character and relationships that lead to Happiness and success in life.

Finally, let’s remember that we’re America. Our strength comes from our unity around a shared understanding of life combined with the diversity of our individual talents and experiences.

We’re facing a great test. Let’s become better people and a better America by meeting this challenge together.