ART : TASTE, POPULARITY, DISCOVERY, FAME...WHAT DOES MERIT HAVE TO DO WITH IT?

AN ESSAY

What makes art great? Is it the color? The brushstroke? The imaginativeness? The originality? Does effort help? Is there some checklist to follow? Can you learn how to create great art? Or are great artists merely “chosen,” as if by fate? Why does a van Gogh sell for more than some unknown artist from the same era with a comparable style? Why are Basquiat’s dribblings worth more than an unknown artist from the same era who generated similar dribblings? In other words, what makes “great art” so special?

There is no way to objectively answer these questions. In fact, they are profoundly troubling. I am sure that art historians and university professors can lecture me on the myriad reasons why a Picasso is “better” and “worth more” than “lesser known” artists’ works from the same period. But I reject all attempts to objectively qualify art. Art has nothing to do with objectivity. And artists achieve fame because someone discovers them, not because they have “objective talent.” “Great art” did not become “great” because of some magical gift in the artist. Rather, it became “great art” because influential people liked it at the time and vigorously promoted it. Ironically, these influential people have never been artists, nor have they lived artists’ lives. Mostly, they have been bourgeois liberals with enough spare money to buy paintings, then yap about them to their bourgeois friends at wine-drenched gallery openings.

Art appeals to taste. Everyone has different tastes. While many people share tastes, no one can rightfully assert that their taste is better than another person’s. One person likes Limburger cheese. Another does not. One person likes pop art. Another hates it and doesn’t even consider it “art” at all. There is no way to objectively measure “artistic value,” because “artistic value” is a taste question; it is in the eye of the beholder—or perhaps, we should say, the tongue of the taster. Art represents an individual’s expression through imagery. Some will call it beautiful. Others will call it ugly. If enough people call it beautiful, they might make it famous. But maybe they won’t. The viewer is not bound to do anything. Viewing art is subjective; and the viewer is the ultimate judge. There is no objective standard: People either like your art or they don’t.

Art goes nowhere without viewers and their reactions. Once art appeals to a certain person’s taste, he might become enthusiastic about it. If he is a bum, it won’t matter. A bum doesn’t have influential friends or money to buy paintings. But if he is a lawyer, doctor or philanthropist, the possibilities grow. Well-heeled bourgeois know other well-heeled bourgeois. They talk to one another. They spend money together. They go to art auctions. If a rich dentist sees a painting he considers “fantastic,” he might tell his securities broker friend about it. The friend may agree, then tell his father, a retired banker with disposable income. In this way, art becomes “popular” among people in a position to make it “famous.” Once art achieves some popularity, promoters get involved. They spread the word even more, leading undifferentiated viewers to look at the art. “Wow,” think these new viewers. “If this painting is so popular, it must be good.” More and more people buy prints. The prints become famous.

Popularity, then, is a prerequisite for “greatness.” What begins as the fickle taste judgment of an individual bourgeois becomes the kernel for “great art.” Artists themselves have no power over reactions to their work. They simply live at a particular moment in time, express their feelings in visual form, then present their works. They cannot control whether they become popular. If Jean-Michel Basquiat had lived during van Gogh’s time, his works may not have generated as much buzz as they did in New York in the 1980s. And if Picasso were born in 1981, his works may not have generated as much buzz in Paris as they did because he was born in 1881. Artists become popular because they are born into particular times and places. Certain tastes exist at those times and in those places. Their work appeals to those tastes. When enough “influential people” become enthusiastic about their work, artists become famous. And once artists are famous, people start using the word “great” to describe them. Enough people like them. Enough people find their work beautiful. Yet they did not intend these results. The artist just went about his business. Fate blessed him with admirers who happened to find his work beautiful. He had no power to influence whether people would like him. They just did.

Some great artists got lucky during their lifetimes. Others did not. No matter whether they achieved fame before or after death, they never orchestrated it. In fact, most artists start off poor, wretched and despised. Artists do not “fit in” because they do not find “traditional work.” In western society, that is a sure way to attract scorn, both from society at large and from one’s own family. Picasso lived in an unheated Parisian flat when he was 20. Van Gogh bumbled aimlessly around Holland and Belgium, earning virtually nothing. Basquiat illegally spray-painted New York City subway trains; he was a “vagrant.” These were not “successful men.” They were outcasts, men who did not belong. They did not find “traditional employment” because they had larger things on their minds. They did not follow the “traditional life program.” According to bourgeois mythology, they should have come to ruin. Yet in each case, they became wildly famous. Why? Because some well-placed people liked their art, bought it, promoted it and made it popular. Gertrude Stein patronized and promoted the young Picasso. Andy Warhol patronized and promoted the young Basquiat. And numerous local bourgeois patronized and promoted van Gogh, although his fame did not mature until after he died.

But what made these men so special? Surely there must have been other tramps with artistic ability who simply did not have the good fortune to run into Gertrude Stein or Andy Warhol. If artists become famous because their work appeals to “influential tastes,” then blind luck plays a role in their success. After all, it is a matter of pure chance whether an “influential person” encounters a future “great artist.” Perhaps there have been other Picassos throughout history, but no wealthy barons saw their paintings in time. This is a disheartening thought. Yet I cannot escape it because “great art” depends on discovery. If some “influential person” does not discover an artist, no one will ever know about his genius. He will just die; no one will remember him. In fact, no one ever learned about him in the first place. In this sense, merit and genius have less to do with “great art” than good fortune. Picasso, Basquiat and van Gogh had sufficient merit to appeal to influential people’s tastes. But they also were lucky enough to have been discovered by the right people. Bums did not discover them. Bankers, lawyers, aristocrats, princes and wealthy dentists did. That is why we hail them as “geniuses” today. And that is why their paintings cost millions each.

“Great artists” owe their fame to their handlers. Fame, notoriety and popularity do not depend on intrinsic merit. They depend on others’ judgments. A person is not famous because he is intrinsically “the most talented” or “the smartest.” He is famous because enough people know about him. It is about numbers. If enough people know about you, you are famous. If they know about you because you supposedly create “great art,” then you are a “famous artist.” That does not mean that you are “intrinsically talented.” It simply means that your work appeals to many people’s tastes. To achieve fame, it is all about knowing the right people. Picasso, Basquiat and van Gogh luckily encountered people who had the power to effectively spread the word about them. Their work happened to please the right people’s tastes, and these people, in turn, told their friends about the art. Like wildfire, their popularity took off. Did their talent have anything to do with it? Perhaps. But talent alone did not lead to fame. Influential people did, along with their influential social networks. Put simply, “artistic talent” (if such a thing exists in the abstract) without discovery is like gold buried beneath the ocean floor—it is worthless. Only a determined miner can realize its potential. And the miner is the handler, not the artist. Without a handler and a promoter, the artist—talented or not—lies buried.

For all these reasons, I am deeply suspicious about assertions that certain art is “great.” When I look at art, I engage in an individual inquiry. I let art affect my own tastes. My tastes are my own; no one else controls them. I don’t care what art critics or professors say. If it pleases my tastes, I like it. If it doesn’t, I don’t. In many cases, I like art that has been labeled “great.” But I don’t like it because someone else told me it was great. I like it because my own tastes happen to match the majority’s. In essence, I remember that art is about subjective taste, not objective merit. And I remember that most art in famous museums or at Sotheby’s is only there because some wealthy promoter happened to really like it a long time ago.

All these things should deeply bother an artist. If I were an artist, I know they would bother me. After all, artists express themselves, no matter what people expect from them. They live dangerous, risky, unconventional lives. Yet no matter how powerful or meaningful their expression, they have no control over their popularity. They must surrender their fate to the subjective tastes of bourgeois art collectors and patrons, who all lead lives categorically different from the artist’s rebellious existence. Artists do not decide whether a millionaire banker likes their brushstrokes or paint splashes. The banker likes what he likes; it is not for the artist to say. The banker may hate the painting and walk out. Or he may fall in love with it, tell his colleagues about it, make the artist rich and attract an art museum’s attention.

What did the artist have to do with these reactions? Nothing. His “artistic ability” merely provided an opportunity for an “influential person” to react. But the power to react resides in the “influential person.” And fame does not result without a precise chain of lucky events that begins with discovery. Merit does not trigger this chain of lucky events. Merit merely provides an opportunity to appeal to an influential person’s tastes. That is only the first step toward fame—and possible “greatness.”

For better or worse, “greatness” in any endeavor depends on fame. No man is great if no one knows about him. Fame, in turn, depends on many lucky events, including the identity of the person who makes the initial discovery. “Great art” is great because the right people liked it at the right time. It is “great” because enough people who liked it were enthusiastic enough to promote it to others. Did the artist influence these reactions? No. He just painted what he saw in his mind. He expressed himself. He did not “make himself great.” Others did that for him. And they only did it because he appealed to their tastes, not because he had some magical talent that entitled him to greatness. In this light, “artistic ability” is at best overrated and at worst irrelevant. Put simply, “artistic greatness” derives from historical accident and dominant taste judgment, not self-revealing abstractions.

If Picasso had not encountered Gertrude Stein, he would have struggled on, alone and unknown. And if van Gogh’s paintings did not appeal to some wealthy patrons in Amsterdam, no one would ever have known about him, either. Their talents would simply have evaporated into the vastness of time and human experience, like so many others we never discovered. In sum, when it comes to “artistic greatness,” promotion and luck beat natural talent any day.

PROSAIC PEOPLE’S FEDERAL ALLIANCE FOR THE STATEMENT OF VAGUELY PROFOUND, PRETENTIOUS-SOUNDING AND PERFECTLY OBVIOUS TRUTHS

POLITICAL PARTIES FOR A CHANGING WORLD

By : Prof. Martin F. Fillmore, Ph.D. (English Literature), Party Spokesman and Chief Rhetorician; Former Chief Executive Officer, B. R. Blandings Publishing Co., Inc., purveyors of simple literature for simple minds; Professor of Writing (Stanford University); Screenwriter; Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Literature (the novel “Waiting” (1997)).

We live. We die. We see. We have eyes. As humans, we experience. We were born. We have parents. That means we have mothers. We also have fathers. We have families. We are one. We are Americans. We live in a country. It is called America. Indians used to live here. Now we do.

We are the Prosaic People’s Federal Alliance for the Statement of Vaguely Profound, Pretentious-Sounding and Perfectly Obvious Truths. That means we tell the truth. Truth means we do not lie. We say things the way they are. Often, things are simple. We tell simple truths. Sometimes the truth is vaguely profound. Sometimes it is not. Whether profound or not, we tell the truth. The truth unites us. The truth is now.

Often people do not say things because they sound too obvious. But we are not afraid to do exactly that. We are not afraid to say that trees bloom in spring. We are not afraid to say that snow falls in winter. And we are not afraid to say that most people have two hands. In life, even obvious things must be said. We gain nothing through vagueness. We must communicate. What is obvious to one man may not be so to another.

We can solve problems if we communicate. There is no need to be vague. We are prosaic. We do not aim to confuse. We simply say what is obvious. The truth is obvious. As prosaic people, we declare obvious truths. We do not lie. We might not impress, but we do not lie, either. In politics, simplicity works. It is better to say obvious truths than subtle lies. We are not afraid.

Politics involve many people. We are the people. We stand united. We hold beliefs. We cherish ideas. We all have different ideas because we are all different people. We are different, yet the same. We are different because we all have different names. We are the same because we are all people. In this country, it is OK to be both different and the same. There is no need to fight. Fighting involves disagreement. Disagreement involves intolerance. But we do not disagree. We are not intolerant. We have strength in ourselves. We are not weak because the truth is strong. We are not weak because we tell the truth.

But we do not tell complex truths. We tell perfectly obvious truths. We say that the country is broke because it is. Our country is broke because it owes more money than it has. Broke means you have no money. If you owe more than you have, you have no money. That means you are broke. We are not afraid to say it. It is true. We do not shrink from truth. Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes it does not. We say it no matter what. We may be prosaic, but we say what is true. We do not misrepresent or deceive. We say what we see. We see that the country is broke. That’s why we say it’s broke. That makes us different from other political parties. We value truth. They don’t.

White people live in America. So do black people and Asian people. White people have white skin and various hair colors. Black people have black skin and black hair. Asians have parents from Asia and black hair. But we are all people. We are all Americans. We all live in a country called America. No one can argue that. We do not shy away from saying it. Some call us stupid. But are we lying? Who can say that people who live in America are not Americans? And who can say that a person with white skin is not white? We are not afraid to say what is obvious. We do not need complexity.

We can solve problems if we keep them simple. Complex means there is too much information at one time. Complex means the information is hard to understand. Simple means there is not much information at one time. It also means that it is not hard to understand. We trust the people. People do not want complexity. They want simplicity. Life is complex enough. They don’t want more complexity. We are prosaic. That means we tell simple, obvious truths. Simple, obvious truths make people feel good because they are easy to understand. We want the people to feel good about their politicians. We do not want deception. We do not want bitterness. We just want simple, obvious truths. The sun is hot. Ice is cold. The sky is blue. What more do we need to know?

We are the Prosaic People’s Federal Alliance. We stand for truth in government. We do not lie. We are easy to understand. We know how to solve problems. We do not delude ourselves with complexities. America is at war. America faces financial crisis. America faces employment crisis. These are not good things. War is not good. Neither is financial crisis or employment crisis. It is better when people work in peace. It is better when there is no financial crisis. In short, we must solve these problems. Complexity will not solve them. Simplicity will. People will follow simple instructions. But they cannot understand complex ones. That is why we give simple instructions.

If you believe in simplicity, vote for us. If you are not afraid to say what is obvious, vote for us. If you dislike complexity, vote for us. We are your party. We say what you want to hear. With us, you will not be confused. We do not talk about things you don’t understand. Rather, we talk about things you understand. We say that health is better than sickness. We say that peace is better than war. And we say that equality is better than inequality. Who can dispute these things? We do not argue. We simply say simple things, even if they are obvious.

There is another path—a simple path. Do not despair. Life need not be complex. We can live simple lives in peace. We must merely stay prosaic. We must merely say what we see. There is no need to over-think. There is no need to over-hypothesize. No, it is enough to say that grass is green, and that green is not red. If you are sick and tired of complexity, join us. Be satisfied with simplicity. It is all right. We do not need more. Because the ocean is wide, and so is the plain. Man is small. The world is large. It overwhelms us. It scares us. But we need not be scared. We must merely stick to what we see and what we know. We can do it. We just need to stay simple.

Put a party in power that is not afraid to say obvious truths. Truth is good because it is better than lying. Vote for truth, even if it is obvious. Vote for simplicity, because simplicity is better than complexity. Haven’t we had enough complexity? Let us live our lives in peace. Let us be prosaic. We are all Americans. We are one. We all have mothers and fathers. We all breathe. We have lungs. We need oxygen. We all speak English, or at least try to. What more do we need? Vote for simple truths today. The era of complexity is over. Do yourself a favor. Be simple. Be obvious. Be prosaic. It is easy. It is painless. It is good.

Painlessness is better than pain. And good is better than bad. The choice is obvious.

COMMITMENTS ARE UNREALISTIC AND USUALLY UNREASONABLE

AN ESSAY

We hear about “commitments” all the time. When we hear that a person has “commitments,” we tend to admire him. In the abstract, we link commitments with positive ideas, such as “a commitment to justice” or “a commitment to goodness.” But we make and break commitments all the time. They do not typically involve lofty ideals or premises. Rather, they concern the forgettable grist of life: Commerce, fleeting relationships, petty plans, timing, instrumental networking—stuff that ultimately no one remembers. Generally, there is nothing intrinsically special about commitments. Rather, they force human beings into a losing game, because commitments try to buck natural changes in life. Just live a few years to learn nothing stays the same for long in this world. That’s why it’s unrealistic—and usually unreasonable—to commit to anything. And in most cases there is nothing we can do about it.

So why do we admire commitments in the abstract? Let us start with the word. “To commit” has many meanings in English. For our purposes, the word’s most relevant meaning involves “pledging, obligation and assurance” to undertake future action or believe future thoughts. Dictionary.com specifies: “4. To bind or obligate, as by pledge or assurance.” A commitment, then, is a statement or promise to do or believe something long in advance. It obligates the speaker to do what he says, even if future events turn out in a completely unexpected way. It forces him into a dilemma between “his word” and the pressures of unforeseen reality. By making a “commitment,” the speaker takes a huge gamble that life will not twist away from him in the time it takes to keep his promise. If he loses the gamble and reneges on his commitment, others label him “dishonorable” and “unreliable.” If he wins the gamble and fulfills his word before circumstances turn on him, others label him “honorable,” “steadfast” and “resolute.” In both events, commitments are risky. If a commitment is long-term, there is a greater chance that intervening reality will undermine the circumstances necessary to fulfill it. But if it is short-term, life has a smaller window in which to unravel it.

Yet our society encourages us to make commitments all the time. In so doing, it leads us into dangerous territory. It insists that we “honor our word” to do things. But if life gets away from us and makes it impossible—or at least extremely difficult—to honor our word, we suffer excoriation for failure. The law adds more thematic baggage to the unofficial “dishonor” stigma that accompanies failure to fulfill commitments. In “regular life,” we make “unofficial” commitments. The law, however, recognizes special “official” commitments called “contracts.” While “regular life” penalizes our failure to adhere to commitments with social stigma and derision for “dishonor,” the law penalizes us in a highly technical way. In so doing, it gives official approval to the prevailing social convention that “commitments are good,” and “word-breaking is bad.” If a commitment fits the legal requirements of “contract,” it is more than just a commitment. It becomes a “cause of action” for money damages when some unlucky soul does not fulfill his word. Fault and circumstance have nothing to do with it. If a person does not do what he promised, the law penalizes him, no matter what the situation may be.

Whether in life or in law, commitments are troublesome. They ask us to ignore and defy inevitable changes that pursue us. In my view, it is not only unrealistic to make certain commitments, but also unfair. This is not to say that it is not admirable to make long-term commitments. It is merely to say that life changes far too much—and men are far too weak—to realistically deliver on many promises. In this sense, life and law overlap. Consider long-term mortgage contracts. Generally speaking, mortgage customers commit—both legally and grammatically—to pay a bank a certain amount every month for 30 years or more. Consider what can happen in one year, let alone thirty. Someone could get sick. Someone could get run over by a train. Someone could suffer crippling depression and lose their job. The economy could tank, causing widespread unemployment. A disaster could strike, destroying the house. Someone could get laid off. Someone could take a pay cut. Someone could have a crisis of conscience and refuse to take a paycheck from a corrupt organization. Someone could lose a limb. Someone could commit a crime and go to prison. Someone could cheat on a spouse, leading to marital strife, divorce, acrimony and reduced income. Someone could lose their parents, causing emotional turmoil. Or someone could just lose interest in life and commit suicide.

All this could happen in one year. Think about what can happen in thirty. Life whips us with unrelenting pressure, from both inside our souls and from the outside world. Yet the bank could care less: You made a commitment. You must pony up the payment every month—like you said you would—no matter what dramatic, unforeseen circumstances you might face. It doesn’t matter that you did not foresee trouble 15 years down the road. You made a commitment. The fact that both popular judgment and the law favor the bank’s position in this situation strikes me as fundamentally unfair—and unrealistic in the extreme. Realistically speaking, we cannot adhere to commitments. Life changes too much. What was normal on the day we signed the contract may no longer be normal five years later. But commitments bind us to our word even when it would be painful or absurd to continue following it. All this ensues because we “pledged ourselves” to an action. When we make commitments, we entirely assume the risk that life will not turn against us in the time it takes to fulfill our word. That is not smart.

Commitments, then, are unrealistic because they ask us to defy inevitable, unforeseen change in life. That is unreasonable because a reasonable person does not take action that is sure to fail. Reasonable people use their sense, experience and memory to judge future actions. If sense, experience and memory reveal that a certain action will likely not yield success, a reasonable person will refrain from engaging in it. Sense, experience and memory quickly reveal to us that life is unpredictable and volatile. What appears tranquil one day may be disrupted and toxic the next. Only a naïve person could ignore that. Why, then, do we continue to make doomed commitments every day? Simple: Because in many cases power plays a role in commitment.

We do not live in an equal society. In our commercial world, we need “things” that we do not have. In order to get what we don’t have, we must deal with people who do. That means we must enter into relationships with people who hold advantages over us, whether they are lenders, merchants, schools or retailers. These people want to make a profit on us, and it is easy to make a profit when you can define the rules of the relationship. If we want money from a bank because we can’t afford a home, they give it to us only if we commit ourselves to paying them back every month with twice as much interest. If we want money from a lender to go to school because we can’t afford tuition, they give it to us only if we commit ourselves to paying them back every month with three times as much interest. When we make our commitment, we do not really think about the future. What do we know what the future holds? We just need the money now, in 2009. We hope that we will have income to pay it back in 2014, 2024 and 2034. We don’t know what disaster might strike in 2013. We don’t know if we’ll lose our job in the financial crisis of 2021. We gamble that we will have the money every month to pay the bank because we made a commitment. Yet that commitment puts the risk on us that our lives will not inalterably change at some time before we fulfill our word. That is a huge risk. And it is an unreasonable one. We take it only because we must. In that sense, our commitments may be unrealistic and unreasonable, but we have little choice in the matter. Either we make an unfair, unrealistic or unreasonable commitment, or we do not get our tuition money. We gamble that we will have a better shot at life with an education, so we take the bet. In this sense, we make commitments in many cases because the relationship is skewed: The powerful party sets the terms, and we must follow.

Not all commitments reflect unequal commercial relationships. Emotional commitments, for instance, do not strictly involve money. Nonetheless, emotional commitments are just as unrealistic and unreasonable as financial commitments. Commitments are commitments, no matter the subject matter. They ask us to defy inevitable, unforeseen changes in life. In emotional commitments, changes can strike from the outside. But more often they originate in human weakness and inconstancy. Human beings’ tastes and desires vacillate as violently as the weather. When two people commit to each other emotionally, they play a dangerous game. They gamble that one or the other will not develop affections for anyone else at any time. They gamble that one or the other will not suffer injury or lose interest in the relationship at any time. They gamble that external pressures will not cause emotional rifts between them.

As was true in financial commitments, these are losing bets. Human beings are weak. They lust for others, no matter what commitments they have made to their mates. Their circumstances change over time, altering the way they look at their partners. The same goes for the other partner. Human beings do what makes them feel happy, not what enables them to fulfill their word. Naturally, this makes emotional commitments extremely difficult to maintain. After all, if the only thing maintaining an emotional relationship is the abstract desire to “keep one’s word” at the expense of happiness, it does not take a psychiatrist to understand that the bond will soon break. The quest for happiness is individual, not joint. It changes with time and circumstances. That leaves a lot of room for mischief in a “committed relationship.” In short, a lot can go wrong over time between two individual people who each want to be happy in their own way. That is why emotional commitments are just as unrealistic and unreasonable as financial commitments. No matter the subject matter, commitments defy change and time. That is why they are losing propositions.

I am certain that readers will find my premise here too pessimistic. My rhetoric might lead readers to think that I have no faith in commitments. This is not entirely true. I think that some commitments can work, and I admire people who adhere to their word no matter what curveballs life throws at them. Honor and commitment do go hand in hand; honorable people do what they promise. But in many cases honor has less to do with it than blind fortune. Some people live relatively changeless lives. Some people do not regularly suffer terrible upheavals or reversals. Some people make plans and no intervening events foil them. They can fulfill their commitments without complaint because nothing bad happens in the meantime. Is it honorable that they fulfill their word? Certainly. Nonetheless, they benefited from stability and changelessness. They could be honorable because nothing forced their hand. We cannot all be so lucky. Our choices do not always define our path in life. Sometimes we suffer reversals and hardship even if we make all the right moves. By contrast, sometimes everything turns out well even if we repeatedly make asinine decisions. Change affects us all differently. And that is really what determines whether we can fulfill commitments.

Honor means that we adhere to principle no matter the circumstances. It means that we take our commitments seriously. I like to think that I have honor. But I won’t deny that life has its own plan. More often than not, life interrupts our plans, alters our values and forces us to change our assumptions. We see things differently from year to year. And sometimes one year will deal us a disaster that fundamentally disrupts everything we thought was true about life. Time poses these challenges to us all. Thus, while it is good to have honor and to adhere to our word, I do not think it is wrong to modify our commitments when life chops the foundations out from under us. There is nothing honorable or spectacular about adhering to commitments when the very reason for those commitments has vanished. In fact, that would be unreasonable.

Yet honor wields a bothersome mystique. It tells us to feel guilty when we must abandon our word, even if life forces our hand in the matter. But should we feel guilty about reneging on a commitment that was unfair and unrealistic in the first place? Or are we to blame for making the commitment to start? At this point, I cannot ignore power. All too often we make commitments under pressure; and powerful parties use our own honor against us to make us feel bad about failing to live up to their unfair conditions. When we give our word to do something under unfair disadvantages, I do not think it dishonorable to renege if we lose the rigged game.

Of course, the law sees it differently. And the house always wins. “You made a commitment....we don't care what happened to you. Tough luck."

But for the grace of God go we all.

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INSCRIBING TRUTH : DO WE EVER KNOW "WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?"

AN ESSAY

We believe what we see with our own eyes. At least, skeptics and empiricists do. When it comes to everyday belief, our senses reign. More particularly, our vision reigns. We must be present to observe something to say for certain that it happened. And if we are not present to observe something, we will only believe it if we can visualize it in our minds as “having reasonably or likely happened.” That is a more complicated endeavor than merely seeing something. But we do it all the time. Our minds constantly alternate between belief and unbelief. Belief reflects our conscious decision whether or not something happened, or whether something exists. We constantly weigh whether or not we believe things. We nurture our beliefs. We express both trust and judgment with belief. If we deem something “worthy of our belief,” we believe it. If not, we say it is “not credible” and dismiss it.

Our eyes and ears have limited range. Our noses and skin nerves have an even more limited range. For better or worse, our immediate ability to sense things is strictly limited to the relatively small size of our bodies. In that light, we have precious limited ability to truly “perceive” things in order to “truly” believe them. Yet our observations and experiences provide us the most reliable pathway to “truth.” We know something is true when we perceive it ourselves. But because our senses are so limited, there are very few things in life we can verifiably believe “true.” For everything else, we must rely on reports. We must accept others’ accounts about “what happened,” then decide for ourselves whether to believe them. Unlike “sensory belief,” this is “second-hand belief.” It does not directly involve the senses. It requires far more intellectual effort than merely seeing something and remembering it.

In general, we can say that we are not bound to believe anything that we do not perceive. If our senses do not directly observe an event, condition or act, there is no way we can say it “actually happened” or “it actually exists.” Rather, we decide whether to believe things we do not observe. Still, we readily believe things we do not observe as long as we satisfy ourselves that the report is “reliable.” What makes stories reliable? This is the core of evidence law. Evidence law aims to regulate the information juries hear in order to provide them only those details that are “most worthy of belief.” In the law—as well as in life—the question for any listener is: What is the truth? That, of course, is the monumental inquiry. And it is not easy, because truth is a tricky subject.

Truth relates to belief. Leaving metaphysics to one side, truth in the law means “what actually happened” in a particular case. That sounds simple, but it is actually immensely complex. After all, “sensory truth” and “sensory belief” only exist in the minds of those who personally experienced an event or perceived a condition. They were “there.” They know “the truth.” But for everyone else—and that means the judge, jury and lawyers—truth is a matter of belief. They were not there. Thus, they must decide for themselves what the “truth” is. It is not what “actually happened.” Only those who perceive something know that. For the listeners, truth becomes a simple question of belief. More to the point, it becomes a subject for judgment. Listeners only believe what they decide “probably happened.” That may be completely different from what “actually happened.” In short, truth in court means nothing more than what the jury is willing to believe.

My evidence professor in law school should have focused on sense and belief before he began teaching us all the Byzantine rules that govern whether particular information is “admissible as evidence” in a court case. If he had begun with belief—and what makes people believe whether something “actually happened”—it would have rendered all the rules easily understandable. The Federal Rules of Evidence methodically screen what information juries may hear before deciding whether to believe a story. In the end, it all comes down to belief. The evidence rules merely channel the information that leads to a jury’s decision whether or not to believe something. No one in the jury has access to “sensory truth” when listening to each side’s story. Rather, like any listener, it must rely on reports. The evidence rules monitor the substance of those reports. In short, they make sense and perception dominant. They allow jurors to hear about what witnesses saw, because vision is supposedly most worthy of belief. Yet the rules carefully restrict a jury’s access to reported language (“hearsay”), because language can distort as much as it can enlighten. And when someone’s life or fortune is on the line, the evidence rules presume that a witness will more likely distort words for his advantage than candidly report what he actually heard. In sum, jurors are free to believe whatever they want. The evidence rules simply try to feed them the “most reliable information” before they decide what is “true.”

But there is more to truth than what a jury decides. Human beings constantly struggle with truth because so much happens that they cannot perceive. They have no choice but to evaluate others’ words. In life, there are no evidence rules to screen out supposedly “unreliable” reports about events, acts and conditions that occur beyond our sensory range. We want the truth, but there is no way we can say it “actually happened.” We must believe things despite imperfect information. We make decisions on imperfect information every day. We judge things “true” even if we cannot verify them.

Still, there are certain institutions that help us believe things we do not perceive. The law provides a ready example. In fact, the law wields a disproportionately large influence on our willingness to believe things we do not perceive. In our legal system, for instance, we theoretically subject suspected criminals to exhaustive procedures designed to affix “truth” to their alleged misdeeds. The State begins by accusing the suspect. Is the accusation “true?” Does the verbal form match what “actually happened?” That is the question. Obviously we cannot know whether it is true for the same reason we cannot know whether anything is true if we are not present to observe it. Yet legal machinery does its utmost to assure us that accused suspects “truly” broke the law. It requires prosecutors to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the suspect committed every single element of the crime. By that requirement, the law seeks to assure the public that the criminal “truly” did what the State says he did, even though the jury never perceived the act. This machinery really has no greater claim on truth than anyone else who was not there to perceive the suspect. Yet it reassures us. It inscribes truth on the offender. After all, truth is persuasive because it reflects belief. If we believe that someone committed a crime, we feel justified in punishing him. Still, just because the law inscribes “an official truth” on a criminal does not verify that he actually did what the State says. We weren’t there. Our senses did not perceive what we believe. To say that the criminal “truly” committed a crime, then, really represents a judgment, not a perception.

Truth is essential to maintain government authority. It is no accident that the State expends maximal effort to affix truth to a criminal’s acts. In so doing, it reminds the people that it not only has the power to punish, but it also has the power to say what “actually happened” without ever perceiving the event. The law, in other words, manipulates public belief and controls truth. Most people readily believe that a convicted criminal did the act for which he received punishment. After all, from a listener’s perspective, there is no reason to doubt the jury’s findings. The listener was not there to witness the criminal’s act. He has no “sensory access” to truth. So he relies on “official channels” to truth. If the State says he committed the crime, and the jury found “beyond a reasonable doubt” that he did, then suddenly the charge becomes “true,” although no one saw it. Listeners comfortably conclude that a convicted criminal did act as charged. They cannot say they know for sure. But they rely on the State’s truth-branding authority. They reward the State with their belief. This is a substantial reward. For when people believe a report, they implicitly approve and respect the person who gives it. The State, then, maintains its control by inspiring belief in its listeners. If the State can cause people to suspend their skepticism and believe things they never see, it truly wields power. In sum, “actual truth” does not really matter. Again, the real question is belief, not “what actually happened.”

Should “actual truth” really matter? I would like to think it does. But that may be asking too much. We cannot sense everything. In fact, considering all the events, acts and conditions that occur and have occurred on this planet, we sense virtually nothing. Everything else comes to us second-hand. We hear, we weigh, we judge, we believe. We make our own truth based on the information before us. Yet many vie for our belief, including the State. We are not bound to give it, but we do. Procedures and rituals awe us. Trials and executions write truth on their subjects. We believe things as long as the State takes the time to grind through the ritual. Does it make an event any more likely to have happened than it would have without the ritual? Not really. If we weren’t there, we can’t really know. Every report is tainted by the bias and perspective of the person who gives it. But we can choose whether or not to believe reports. The State has numerous mechanisms intended to win our belief. And they are quite effective. After all, when we hear that a person has a criminal record, do we believe he committed the crimes, even though we never met him and never saw him do anything? Yes. We have no sensory access to truth in this situation, but we assuage our doubts because the State has written truth upon the man.

In virtually every case, we judge truth. We rarely know it.

STOP WHINING ; START WORKING

GET A JOB, WILL YOU?

By : Mr. Curtis J. Walters, B.A., Senior Recruiting Officer, Lynch, Scrupple, Penny & Gold, P.C., a Fortune 400 Accounting Firm Specializing in Corporate Finance.

Since September, it has been increasingly difficult for Americans to find employment. Despite their zeal to work, unskilled laborers, recent college grads and even highly educated professionals struggle to find jobs. Cascading losses in the stock market erased decades of gains, vaporizing corporate capital, endangering pension plans and forcing companies to tighten their financial belts. In short, there is not as much money to go around as there was a year ago. And when there is not enough money in corporate budgets, employees get cut. In most cases, employee cuts have nothing to do with employee quality; companies just do not have enough money to both keep paying people wages and maintain suitable shareholder returns. When it comes between employee wages and shareholder returns, there is only one conceivable winner: Shareholder returns. In our economy, shareholders are more important than wage-earners. Shareholders have capital to invest. Capital is necessary to create employment in the first place. Thus, shareholders deserve greater consideration than the employees their money creates.

But there is hope for job-seekers all over the country. Today, I am pleased to announce some good news for employees. For the first time since September, Lynch, Scrupple, Penny & Gold is hiring. We are proud to offer employment opportunities at a time when many companies cannot fathom the thought of additional expenditures. We support American workers because American workers are the best at what they do. We also understand that American workers like working. Working gives them a sense of purpose and direction in life. At Lynch Scrupple, we salute American workers for their ethic and dedication. We are pleased to offer them an opportunity to provide vigorous service for a major company. We recognize that unemployment is bad. That is why we are doing our part to help solve the problem.

Lynch Scrupple can hire because we are innovators. Other companies do not hire because they cannot escape traditional thinking about employment. They think they do not have enough capital to invest in new employees. They think they need money to hire. Put simply, they assume that you need to pay employees. But at Lynch Scrupple, we think boldly. We believe that we can hire and expand our business without losing capital because we are flexible enough to buck tradition. We are innovators. We do not imprison ourselves in the past. When it comes to employment, we are progressive.

So what exactly do we do? We no longer pay our new hires. Rather, we offer them the opportunity to render dedicated service for a Fortune 400 corporation. We offer real-world work experience without wages, benefits or opportunities for promotion. Instead, we translate our workers’ efforts into real returns for our shareholders without a corresponding outlay in wages. We offer jobs to anyone who wants to work. But we make it clear from the outset that we will not pay people for their work. We acknowledge that Americans want to work. We give them that opportunity. We simply do not pay them for their labor. Since initiating our “pay-free” employment program, we have received a veritable flood of applications. In this market, beggars can’t be choosers. It is not 1999; it is 2009. Quite simply, employees today understand that it is unreasonable to expect wages, pay, salary and compensation from their employers. Employers have pressing problems of their own; employees understand that employers cannot afford luxuries such as wages anymore.

We find it admirable that modern job seekers recognize corporate problems. Unlike selfish workers in years past, modern employees put their employers’ needs before their own. They do not make obscene demands for pay, benefits, safe working conditions or equal promotion opportunities. Rather, modern employees take simple joy in service. They just want a job, whether it pays or not. They simply want a place to show up every morning and to render service until the late afternoon. Pay is a 20th Century concept, and 21st Century employees do not expect it. They know that jobs are scarce. They are willing to make compromises. Further, they understand that they would have no job at all if they demanded wages. After all, companies today could not survive if they had to pay their new employees. If companies wasted their money on employees, that money would not make its way to the shareholders. And if the shareholders do not make enough money, they will bail out on their investments, destroying the company. In this sense, employees understand that they must forgo pay in order to sustain the economy. We praise modern employees for their selflessness and dedication to service.

Dutiful modern employees do not expect pay or benefits. But there remain workers who cannot adjust their thinking to 21st Century commercial realities. These workers demand pay, health insurance, safe working conditions, air conditioning in the summer, heat in the winter and even flex pay for transit to and from work. They demand overtime, holiday pay, family leave, maternity leave, lunch breaks, seats, vacations, income credits, discrimination-free opportunities and promotions. Put simply, these old-fashioned thinkers will never get a job in today’s market. They can demand all they want; they will stay unemployed. Millions of eager young employees are lining up to work without pay and benefits. Why would a company hire some incorrigible old bat who demands pay when it could just as easily hire a fanatical college graduate who is willing to work 80 hours a week without pay to do the same job? It is simple mathematics: The free employee generates income for the company without a corresponding outlay in wages. The salaried employee, by contrast, generates the same income for the company, but costs money to sustain. In today’s market, any expense is too much. That is why these old-fashioned employees will never get a job today. Modern employees take satisfaction in service; old-fashioned employees serve only themselves. In today’s market, there is no room for selfishness. Modern employees understand that.

We are proud to offer employment opportunities to Americans during these dark economic times. Additionally, we are proud to provide dignified, rewarding work to all those who want to serve. We have a place for everyone in our organization. Unlike other companies, we do not mistreat our employees. We do not beat or torture delinquent workers, nor do we forcibly muzzle employees for talking too much on the job. Unlike other companies, we do not force workers to jump out windows or walk on hot coals to please their supervisors. Rather, we simply provide desks, chairs, computers, telephones, fax machines, paper, file cabinets and electricity necessary to carry out company business. We do not pay our employees or provide benefits; but we do not physically torture them, either. While we might inflict mental torture from time to time, that is a bearable workplace burden. And compared to unemployment, mental torture at work is a light burden. Every American worker knows that mental torture while employed is superior to tranquility while unemployed. Employment represents a reward in itself. Every American would rather suffer mental torture at work than sit unemployed at home. Americans have a purpose. When they are unemployed, they are not fulfilling it.

We provide Americans the means to fulfill their purpose. At the same time, we reinvigorate the economy by spurring shareholder satisfaction and company growth. By rethinking the employment paradigm in America, we make everybody happy. We make the employee happy by offering a place to escape unemployment. We make the shareholders happy by generating profits without a corresponding increase in expenses. Finally, we make the country happy by revitalizing the economy through increased overall company profit, which in turn translates into higher tax revenue and capital investment.

We do all this merely by refusing to pay our employees. Contrary to all expectations, modern American workers did not recoil from Lynch Scrupple’s new business model. They did not run away when we announced that they would no longer receive pay for their work. Rather, they rallied to us. They redoubled their efforts. They took psychic satisfaction—and remuneration—in company service alone. They showed us that they were not working for us “just for the money;” they were working for us because they love service. In short, we have happy, productive employees even though they receive no money for their work. They are happy to be working. Anything beats unemployment, even demeaning employment without pay, benefits or opportunity for advancement. After all, unemployment is the ultimate indignity. When Americans are unemployed, they feel that they are failing in their life mission. Unpaid work is better than no work at all.

In these dark times, we are proud to provide a means for Americans to escape the specter of unemployment. Our workers reflect their gratitude for our confidence in them with boundless productivity. They are thankful that we saved them from unemployment. When everyone told them it was impossible to get a job in today’s market, we defied the odds. We gave them work. We might not pay them or give them air conditioning. We might even require women to come back to work the day after giving birth. But at least our employees can say: “I work for Lynch Scrupple.” That sure beats saying: “I am unemployed.” In America, any job is better than no job. That is what we believe. And we believe in America’s workers.

Are you out of work? Are you feeling desperate? Have people told you that you will never get a job? We won’t deny that times are tough. But if you believe in yourself, you can find employment. The search begins with you. Don’t think like a 20th Century man. Get real. It’s 2009; nobody gets paid anymore. If you are holding out for a job with pay, benefits, vacations and a future, stop deluding yourself. Be modern. Join us at Lynch Scrupple. We can use you. Submit an application today—and escape unemployment tomorrow. It’s time to look at employment in a whole new way—a modern way.

TAZERS : LEGAL, BUT WRONG

AN ESSAY

Two weeks ago, a Texas highway officer stopped a 72-year-old great-grandmother for driving 60 miles per hour in a 45 speed limit zone. See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdDdwxJyZZI. The officer asked the woman to sign a ticket promising that she would appear in court to answer the charge. She refused. The officer ordered her out of her car and violently shoved her onto the roadside. Naturally, she became upset. He raised his voice and threatened to “taze” her unless she complied with his orders. She continued to refuse. Finally, after trying to return to her car, the officer fired his tazer into her body, causing her to shriek and collapse to the ground. As she writhed in pain beneath his feet, the officer shouted: “Get down! Get down! Or you’re going to get tazed again!”

Thanks to the officer’s decisive action, the dangerous suspect surrendered. Well, she really did not have a choice because her muscles were unresponsive. The officer cuffed her and took her into custody. She was charged with speeding and resisting arrest. She suffered no physical injury. When the officer’s dashcam footage made the news, however, the Sheriff’s Office quickly rallied to his defense. A police captain said he acted “properly at all times” and that “no one suffered injury.”

Tazers have generated debate for as long as they have existed. Law enforcement hails them as a revolutionary means to subdue violent, resisting offenders. Liberals call them inhumane, degrading weapons intended to humiliate and subjugate citizens. Law enforcement stresses that tazers “do not cause permanent injury” and are thus “safer than nightsticks” or other bygone restraint methods. Liberals point to the grotesque spectacle that ensues when 50,000 volts of electricity flood through a human body, rendering it instantly limp and motionless. For the liberals, the question is not efficacy. It is dignity and humanity. For law enforcement, the question is crime control and “officer safety.”

I fall on the liberal side in this debate. Nobody likes crime, but no one can suggest that law enforcement should have a free hand in adopting any methods necessary to control it. After all, our Constitution would mean nothing if, as a society, we decided that we wanted to control crime “by any means necessary.” Our Bill of Rights proceeds on the assumption that unchecked government power represents a threat to individual liberty. Government power is most dangerous in the hands of the Executive branch, and that includes the police forces. Without constitutional guarantees securing our bodies, property and dignity, the police could freely detain, question, torture, humiliate, degrade and coerce us at will, all in the name of some nebulous “crime prevention.” We tolerate Executive power only on the understanding that we retain rights against it as individuals. Among those rights is the right to reasonable, dignified treatment by executive officers.

Tazers represent a “means” to enforce the law. For Machiavellians, “means” mean nothing as long as they effectively achieve the desired “ends.” When it comes to crime, the “ends” are compelling: Stopping criminals and enforcing the law. But what means are permissible to effectuate these goals? Machiavelli would have praised Hitler for his commitment to crime control. His police forces knew no boundaries in their efforts to suppress crime. They were highly successful because they had every “means” at their disposal to investigate and prosecute “offenders.” But this example exposes the deep moral flaws in Machiavellian thinking. Means do matter, at least in a constitutional democracy with claimed commitments to lasting principles such as dignity, equality and justice. In America, we have always defined ourselves against tyrants with unrestrained power over citizens. Tyrants employ every means necessary to maintain dominance and control over their subjects. In this sense, Americans have always been deeply suspicious of Machiavellian thinking in government because tyrants read Machiavelli. In our constitutional order, means matter as much—if not more—than the ends.

Tazers bring these age-old issues into focus. Many States now authorize the police to use tazers in order to suppress dangerous or resistant crime suspects. Proponents cite medical evidence that the tazer’s electric charge—while substantial and fearsome to behold—only temporarily shuts down muscle function, leaving the subject uninjured. The subject experiences massive pain for an instant, then it vanishes. Many States embrace tazers because they do not cause “permanent injury.” Many States even reference reports that “old” restraint methods are actually more dangerous because they can potentially cause “permanent injury.” For these States, tazers offer a way to completely subdue suspects without causing injury or placing officers in harm’s way. These States focus on the objective benefits that flow from tazers. They focus on the “ends” that tazers achieve. On paper, it looks good. Tazers are “legal.” They are “modern.” They are “effective.”

But what about reality? Tazers do more than merely “subdue suspects.” They represent a massive, overwhelming intrusion of governmental power onto the body of the individual citizen. Consider the power dynamic in a typical citizen-police confrontation involving a tazer. In most cases, the citizen is unarmed and upset about being accused of a crime. The officer, by contrast, has a gun, wears an official uniform and threatens to employ a futuristic-looking electrical device to render the suspect totally powerless in an instant. Even if the suspect has not committed a serious infraction, the officer holds all the authority. Furthermore, he has the raw, technological means to enforce his will over the suspect. When he says: “Step back,” he has the power to enforce compliance and punish defiance by sending a 50,000-volt shock through anyone petulant enough to question him. Thus, the officer has all the cards. If the suspect does or says something he does not like, he can employ his technological advantage to utterly break the suspect’s physical and emotional capacity to defy him. All the tazer videos show this dynamic at work. The officer seems to relish his ability to reduce his antagonist to utter subjection. Even when the suspect goes down and begins wailing like an injured pig, he continues shouting and even threatens to “taze him again” unless he complies with his every command.

Is this rational law enforcement? Or mere power play?

Tazers are frightening devices. They do more than merely “allow” police to “control” unruly crime suspects. They arm executive officers with a devastating weapon that breaks individual citizens’ will and reduces them to compliant, screaming children. In my view, this is too much. I do not like government action that impinges deeply upon the dignity of the individual, whether or not they are crime suspects. When a police officer shoots an unarmed suspect with a tazer solely to punish him for willfulness or resistance to orders, I see tyranny, not legitimate “crime control.” No matter what benefits the State claims from tazer use, I cannot bear the spectacle of citizens reduced in an instant to a shrieking quarry. It bothers me to know that government can do this to its own citizens in a constitutional democracy. “But it does not injure them,” say the tazer defenders. Perhaps not. But tazers certainly inflict pain, indignity and humiliation on them for daring to question a police officer’s authority, even if it is misplaced. In my eyes, that is too much power for an executive officer to possess. It is not about crime control. It is about governmental conduct. And dignity matters to me.

Sadly, most people disagree with me. They wonder why I have sympathy for crime suspects. They also wonder why I care about some worthless criminal’s dignity. Even the Supreme Court disagrees with me. In case after case, they reject constitutional challenges alleging “arbitrary” police conduct. The Court says that you have a “liberty interest” to be free of “arbitrary police action” that “shocks the conscience” because such action “offends the decencies of civilized conduct.” See, e.g., Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998). But the Court whittles away that hopeful language by requiring challengers to show that the police “intended to cause harm unrelated to the legitimate object of arrest.” In tazer cases, the police will never admit that they intended to cause you harm; in fact, they will simply say they did not cause you “harm” at all, because tazers “do not cause permanent injury.” Your writhing agony after being hit by 50,000 volts does not qualify as “harm,” because it was not “permanent.” This is the mischief to which hypertechnical legal argument can lead.

For me, dignity means more than the legal abstractions our Supreme Court is willing to define in law. I defend everyone’s dignity against governmental intrusion because I believe in the principles that animate our constitutional order. In my view, that order reflects the primacy of the individual against government action. And in police-citizen confrontations, government action grossly overpowers individual autonomy. In unfair fights, I favor the underdog. I think anyone who believes in the individual over the government should think the same thing. In my eyes, zapping people with tazers because they refuse to comply with intimidating police orders is wrong and unfair, whether it is “legal” or not. Tazers allow government to physically and emotionally break individual citizens into abject submission with a single trigger pull. I do not like that idea.

There are so many things in our society that are “legal but wrong.” I place tazers in that category. What do I mean by this? To understand what I mean, I return to the tension between “ends” and “means.” Legislatures—and the citizens who elect them—can choose to make certain things “legal.” In so doing, they democratically enshrine certain value judgments concerning what “ends” must be achieved. Many State legislatures have decided that tazers admirably advance the governmental interest in “crime control.” They made tazers “legal” without really reflecting on the “means” they chose to accomplish their purpose. Yet there is a different source for “right” and “wrong;” it does not flow from the legislature, or even the Constitution. Legislatures make things legal or illegal; they do not make things “right” or “wrong.” In many cases, legislatures make things legal that are also good. But they also make things legal that are wrong. Tazing people is wrong but legal. It is wrong for government officers to zap citizens into utter submission, whether or not they suffer “permanent injury.” It is wrong to inflict scorching pain on citizens, even if it is “temporary.” It is wrong to inflict pain on citizens merely for being willful or for questioning the basis of governmental action. It is wrong for government officers to use tazers to childishly assert dominance over citizens. No matter what legitimate goals tazers serve, I think they are the wrong means to achieve them.

I am fully aware that law enforcement proponents will heatedly disagree with my views on this subject. They are welcome to disagree with me. I understand that some people value crime control more than others, and that some people believe that criminal suspects do not deserve dignity or respect from government. I know there are people who do not really care whether government violates a person’s dignity as long as that person is “a criminal” or somehow “blameworthy.” I believe the contrary. In my view, dignity and respect are absolute governmental obligations in our constitutional order. They are principles that go beyond mere expediency. They apply whether the subject is a murderer or a saint. And they should prevent government from adopting certain methods to effectuate otherwise legitimate goals.

My response to the law enforcement apologists is this: Once we allow increased government intrusion onto the bodies of individual citizens, what’s next? We allow tazers. They allow officers to inflict pain and degradation on people who have not been convicted of any crime. Why? “Because we want to control crime,” they say. Yet that is a broad mandate. What fearsome methods might we also permit to effectuate that goal, as long as we move “incrementally?” What about a tazer that stops the heart “temporarily?” What about a tazer that causes “temporary memory loss?” These are significant deprivations, no matter whether they are “permanent” or “temporary.” A suspect could claim: “Government stopped my heart,” and no one would care. That is profoundly troubling.

If we do not take a stand for individual dignity at some point, there is no logical end to potential governmental intrusion upon us. If we do not make dignity a meaningful principle, we all degenerate into lawyers arguing about whether something is “legal,” even when we know it’s wrong.

"LIVE YOUR LIFE"... EXCUSE ME, BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES

Advertising nauseates me for several reasons. I don't like it because it twists and omits information in order to induce people to enrich the speaker. I don't like it because it plays to weak human sense. And I don't like it because it presumes to impose "acceptable values," when in fact it merely wants its listeners to go buy things. Advertisers could care less whether listeners "Just Do It," "Are Who they Are" or "Get Down with Dr. Scholl." They just want people to associate sounds, images and words with their product so that a listener will go buy the product when he remembers it. It is fundamentally childish: "Look. Listen. Remember. Go. Buy." Advertising speaks to commercial urges; and commercial urges are not complicated. They are as simple as human sense.

Yet advertisers act in very subtle ways. It is easy to forget just how simple and base they are because they wear disguises. They try to fool listeners into thinking they stand for something other than commercial gain. Today, for example, I was riding the subway and I saw a man carrying an "American Eagle" shopping bag. There was a new advertising slogan on the bag: "LIVE YOUR LIFE." It was not enough to just show pictures of shirts, pants and youthful sunbathers. American Eagle wants people to remember the phrase "Live Your Life" when they think about buying hip beachwear.

Why, exactly? What does "living my life" have to do with buying American Eagle clothing? More to the point, what does "live your life" mean, anyway? And why is American Eagle commanding me to "live my life?" Does American Eagle have some authority to recommend whether I live, or how I live? Should I be willing to listen to their advice about my life? After all, who can say what my life--or anyone's life--means? Aren't we living precisely to figure out why we're here? If anyone commands me to "live my life," I would like to issue the orders, not American Eagle or some advertiser bent upon wreaking commercial gain from my existence on this planet.

American Eagle's slogan made me angry. Not only did it bring to mind why I detest advertising, but it made clear to me an important reason why I detest it. American Eagle's slogan fits into a particular advertising category: The "values" pitch. In my view, advertising really pushes its legitimacy when it ventures down the "values path." As mentioned, advertising has a simple goal: To implant sensory impressions that mature into memories and inducements to buy. It provides targeted information in just such a way that a listener forms a favorable memory about a particular product or service. In this way, advertisers increase awareness about their products or services, which in turn increases the probability that someone will buy them. It is all about numbers: If more people know about something, there is a greater chance that someone will act on the knowledge and spend their money. Advertising solicits a commercial transaction between the speaker and the listener. If the transaction materializes, advertising has done its job. It does not matter whether the listener and the speaker share values or even agree on anything other than the price. Advertising does not aim to sway your conscience or alter your life philosophy. It just wants you to spend your money and make the advertiser rich. That is your purpose in the advertising scheme.

Why, then, do advertisers go further? Why must they also espouse a particular value perspective when suggesting that people go buy their products? Is it merely to woo a target audience? When American Eagle commands you to "Live Your Life," are they appealing to those individually-minded rebels who want to ignore convention and make their own way? Or are they commanding you to "Live Your Life" in the "American Eagle way?" If they are, they are commanding you to get young, get tan, put on your damn flip-flops, angle up that polo shirt collar, frost that hair, throw on a shell necklace and start getting it on with some hot white chicks on a private beach somewhere near the prep school. In other words, you need to start "living your life," man! You aren't doing it now, so you'd better start. You need to start having fun "AE style;" that's an order. Note that "Live Your Life" is not a recommendation. It is an imperative.

Yet life is not fun, nor is it all about having fun. Anyone who succumbs to the delusion that life is fun will not last long once the "external world" falls upon him with what Freud called "merciless forces of destruction." See Civilization and its Discontents, p. 25. I will choose what is valuable to me in my own life. I resent the notion that a superficially-minded advertiser dares to suggest how I should live my life, let alone command me. Yet advertisers often do this. Are people really so weak that they need commercial actors to tell them what is valuable in their lives? We only get one shot at existence. It conceals a great mystery for all of us. If anyone can answer why we live, or how we should live, we should look no further than ourselves. Perhaps we can trust a few close friends or loved ones to help us find our way. But we certainly should not entrust that duty to an advertiser who just wants our money.

For advertisers, our life purpose is amazingly simple: "Stay Alive and Buy My Product." Any suggestion beyond that is facetious. Advertisers do not really care about me as long as I survive to buy their product. As long as I buy the product, it does not matter whether I agree with the advertiser's abstract life philosophy. That is why I do not listen to advertisers' disingenuous invitations to "live my life" or otherwise adopt particular values. I might live in a commercial world and I might need to buy things. But when it comes to "living life," I will choose my own path.

If anyone tells me to "Live My Life," it will be me, not American Eagle. American Eagle sells baggy shorts, pink shirts, cargo pants and sunglasses. It does not order people how to live their lives. It is a seller with a stock exchange marker, not a sovereign deity with power over individual destiny. Commerce does not grant authority to instruct others how to live their lives. It does many other things, but it does not have authority to control others' most intimate life values. Despite its theoretical limitations, however, advertising submerges us in sensory detritus every day. It is difficult to separate the legitimate from the illegitimate. It is hard to ignore things that constantly barrage the senses. And commercial speakers appear to have power because they are constantly talking. In fact, they speak so much that we have to consciously avoid listening to them. They have things we want. They constantly recommend what we should want. Yet they have no strict power to tell us who we are. "Being" is our task. Commerce plays solely to our urges to "have." It even encourages us to confuse whether "having" actually translates into "being."

Having said that, some are content to "have" in order to find satisfaction in life. I'm not. Perhaps that is why I hate advertising. In response to American Eagle's command to "Live my Life," I respond: "You are not competent to give that order."

GET A HANDLE ON YOUR EMPLOYEES

EMPLOYERS' WORLD WEEKLY - VOL. 59, No. 3
(SUMMER 2009)

SUMMER IS HERE : DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR EMPLOYEES ARE?

By : Mr. G. Stanley Putts, M.B.A., Ph.D., Chairman and Chief Managing Officer, SpeedSave Credit Reporting Associates, Inc. (a Delaware Corporation); Professor, Employee Management Strategy Development, State University of Southern New Jersey School of Business (1988-present); Licensed Psychiatrist in the State of New Jersey.

It's that time of year again. As managers move into the hot months, they face new threats to productivity. Summertime means that more consumers are in the market for business. During the summer, managers face fresh opportunities for growth and profit. But summer also means that employees have other things on their minds. According to Department of Labor Statistics, productivity levels fall at least 43% between June and September, even when payrolls increase. What does this mean? Simple: It means that employees don't do their jobs as well in the summer. Managers need to reverse this alarming trend. To do so, they must do two things: (1) Understand the employee's mind; and (2) Adopt result-oriented measures calculated to increase productivity.

Good managers understand that employees make or break a company. Without motivated employees, companies could not keep their businesses afloat. Without diligent workers to handle the myriad mundane tasks necessary to sustain a profitable outfit--from opening mail to answering phones to proofreading letters to driving trucks--businesses could not grow. Without good employees, businesses would never produce returns for shareholders. And let's not forget who's important. Shareholders put up the capital needed to open businesses; and they want to be rewarded. It's up to us--the managers--to make sure their investments pay off. Employees have no stake in companies. They merely work to ensure that shareholders receive their rewards. In return, the company pays them an amount that allows them to fulfill their own financial obligations without impairing healthy profit levels for the shareholders. In sum, paying employees is a necessary investment. It would be nice if we did not have to pay them anything. But we do not live in a perfect world.

Good managers pay employees just enough to make them feel that they are not being exploited. This is essential; managing pay is a crucial management skill. In fact, good managers know how to set pay precisely to maximize two effects: (1) Shareholder profit; and (2) Employee morale. Shareholder profit is easy; one must merely crunch some numbers and show a higher total this year than last year. But employee morale is much trickier to achieve. After all, there is no quarterly balance sheet column to account for employees' feelings. Yet good managers must master employees' feelings just as efficiently as they must master profit levels. To accomplish that goal, good managers must understand the employee's mind.

As a trained business psychiatrist, I am pleased to offer managers an insight into the employee's mind. Many managers view their employees with barely-veiled contempt. They see them as a nuisance rather than a resource. They see them as ornery children who must be violently restrained in order to maintain favorable productivity levels. Although violence, repression and contempt are appropriate tools in the battle to secure employee morale, one must think more profoundly. Conceptually speaking, employees serve the company. A good servant does not just perform the tasks appointed to him; he also has the proper mental outlook. Servants, in other words, have two duties: (1) They diligently perform required tasks; and (2) They take their motivation from their masters. Thus, there is a physical and mental element to service. In my experience, I have found that the best employees have the best mental outlook. They look to their masters for both direction and meaning. They truly believe in the employer's mission, and their activity derives from their mental dedication to that mission. A truly motivated employee is a loyal servant. His will focuses not on himself, but on his employer's needs. He experiences emotional satisfaction when the employer achieves success. His own desires fade into obscurity. In essence, then, good employees have the proper will. They are not distracted. Their minds merge with the employer's will. They sacrifice their own well-being to please their masters. When a manager succeeds in transforming mere employees into true servants, there is no end to a company's potential success.

But that is Utopian thinking. As managers, we strive to make true servants out of our employees. Yet all too often we must settle for less. All too often, we cannot fully replace every employee's will with the employer's mission. There are always a troublesome residues in the employee's mind: Individual desires, personal wants, dreams, resentments, family tribulations, financial worry. We cannot always fully win over an employee's mind. No matter how much we try, employees always hold a little bit back for themselves. That damages productivity. Productivity demands maximum concentration and dedication to the employer's mission. When an employee is thinking about something other than the employer's success, his work will not be as zealous as it would be if his mind were clear. To that extent, dreams, desires, wishes, fascinations and individual characteristics harm productivity. Employers cannot tolerate this. When employees start thinking about themselves, productivity suffers. And when that happens, profit margins dwindle, injuring the shareholders.

Managers have a duty to please the shareholders. They can do this by getting a handle on their employees. As mentioned, the key to productivity is employee will. The battle for employee will begins with employee morale. To channel employees' will toward the employer, managers must be prepared to adopt result-oriented measures calculated to increase employee morale. Spirited employees with high morale have the proper will. When it comes to employee management, then, good mangers must consider how employees think. As mentioned, employees have a dangerous tendency to think for themselves while on the job. Good managers find ways to eradicate individual thinking among employees and to replace it with high morale. Still, this is no easy task. Individual employees may be thinking about coming weekends, girlfriends, sick parents, outstanding loans, car payments, poor health, their children, sex, last weekend, parties, the beach, vacations, Friday night movies, their homes or even the mere fact that they are hungry. When employees think about these things, they necessarily are not thinking about the employer's mission. This is dangerous.

Worse, employees minds drift even more during hot summer months. They dream about family barbecue get-togethers, beach parties, bikinis, sunbathing, poolside excursions, boat rides, amusement trips and drunken forays in the dunes. More to the point, these thoughts only intensify when employees look outside the window and see how sunny it is, then reflect that they are stuck in an office tower for the next 15 hours. It is no wonder that productivity falls 43% between June and September. Good managers must stop these thoughts before they start. In a word, individual employee thinking is dangerous to employee morale, productivity and shareholder satisfaction. As managers, we have a duty to guard against it at all times. We do not pay employees to be individuals. We pay employees to serve us.

Good managers get a handle on their employees. To eliminate dangerous individual thinking, good managers are not afraid to take bold steps. A good manager does not increase morale by "being nice;" a good manager yells, threatens and creates intense workplace rivalries. "Nice managers" encourage employees to think for themselves. "Nice managers" try to be "friends" with employees. They even give employees "privacy" and "respect" while on the job. Yet this leads only to wasted time and wasted money. Unsupervised employees exploit the business for money while giving nothing back to the shareholders. Good managers, by contrast, scrupulously oversee their employees to ensure proper morale. They segregate employees to minimize small talk, gossip, chatter, joking and laughter. They install surveillance cameras to ensure that only company work motivates employee behavior. They publicly discipline employees who surf the internet for personal reasons while on the job. When necessary, they call lazy workers into their offices for full-scale tongue lashings. In short, good managers create a positive atmosphere in which employees are happy to carry out employer business. In such an atmosphere morale increases and servants serve well. Good managers are like good fathers: They assert their authority strongly and often.

Good managers must not be afraid to scream, yell, insult, degrade, humiliate and belittle their employees. When it appears that an employee represents a danger to employee morale through individual thinking, humor, good temperament or popularity, a good manager must not hesitate to tell him to "Get a grip or get fired." When an employee exhibits a propensity to do things in a manner different from prescribed protocols, a good manager must not hesitate to personally discipline the employee. Willful employees represent a danger to all. If employees do not respect protocols intended to ensure maximum productivity, shareholder satisfaction will suffer. In that light, any attempt to do things differently must be vigorously suppressed. Managers must show that they know best. And they must not be afraid to crush any dissent before it threatens employee morale.

We do not want willful employees. Good employees are good servants, and servants are not willful. In fact, a servant's will is always subservient to his master's will. In that sense, willfulness and service are mutually exclusive. When a manager detects willfulness in an employee, he must act quickly and decisively. Personal insult, threat, reduced pay and isolation represent ample means to eradicate willfulness. Extreme cases may necessitate physical restraint, company re-education or hanging the employee upside down and forcing him to recite the company motto until he exhibits proper respect for the employer's mission. Willfulness cannot exist in the workplace. Good managers tolerate only one will: The will to serve the employer.

Managers must not have moral qualms about the methods they choose to increase morale. True, some methods may alienate employees more than others. But as long as the end result generates more productivity, any method is justified. To that extent, managers cannot sympathize or empathize with employees. Employees are not the same as shareholders. Employees exist to enrich the shareholders, not to enjoy their lives as unique individuals. And managers do not exist to secure comfort and peace for employees. To the contrary, managers exist to please the shareholders, and shareholders will not be pleased with low productivity. In this light, good managers have a clear purpose: To increase employee productivity at all costs. As we have seen, high productivity and high employee morale go hand in hand. In the same vein, high employee morale results when a good manager eradicates dangerous individual thinking among employees and readjusts their will. Thus, good managers have a well-defined task: To vigorously increase productivity by increasing employee morale through the suppression of individual thought.

As good managers, let us strive to reverse the trend this summer. If we understand what it takes to generate high morale, we can get a handle on our employees. The time for understanding and tolerance is over. Good management demands the courage to disparage, suppress, overpower, intimidate, cajole, deceive and badger our employees into productivity and service. After all, we are not doing this for our health. Employees are not individuals. They are the means by which shareholders secure suitable profits. They need to get their heads in the game, and this is a game we need to win. We serve the shareholders. To perform our task, we, too, must view employees for what they are: A means to an end.

We wish you a prosperous and productive summer!