The Leader's Journey with Lee Thayer

About "Communication!"

When I was a child growing up on my Irish grandparents' small, self-sufficient farm in southeast Kansas, I was intrigued by the notion of "communication." Having no one my age to talk to, I tried talking to the animals - and we had most kinds. I pretended that they pretended that they understood. So, I thought: that's the way communication works.

With their eyes rolling around in their heads, and their chewing gum as if it was a cud, I spent 40 years as a professor because it seemed I had come full circle. I did learn a lot on the trip.

Many years later, I am still intrigued by the notion of communication. I have the proper background for it - degrees in the humanities/literature, engineering, psychology, and a lifelong interest in music. For me, communication is the infrastructure for everything human. Talk, with oneself or with others, precedes everything. And this is crucial: communication is not about the "sender" but about the "receiver." All consequences flow from how the receiver interprets things. We may reify the "message." But there isn't one until the receiver says there is.

My new book, Communication! A Radical Philosophy for Life's # 1 Problem, is a sort of summation - after a lifetime of teaching and research - of perhaps how we ought to be thinking about it if we want to live in the world most people only dream about.

It is intended to enable you to think about in ways that are more grounded in reality than most of our academic and popular "theories" about it. If you better understand it, the more advantage you will have over it.

Communication - Two Definitions to Consider

Communication - a fairly long word, a complex subject to discuss, and a hard term to define. But allow me to take a "leap of faith" and offer two definitions for your consideration (and, hopefully, comment).

Communication is first of all about interpretations. Nothing comes to us with its meaning inscribed on its back. What something means to you or to me is always in interpretation. As you read this, you are interpreting what I have written. As I wrote it, I was interpreting a lifetime of thinking about communication, of studying it, of researching it. Beyond that, I was faced with how best to package my interpretations so that your interpretations could possibly be of optimal value to you. No mean trick.

Consider that if you and I are to "communicate," each of us has to reach across the chasm that separates us to consider how to deal with the interpretations you might make of what I write.

Communication is also the process that creates (and maintains or changes) the minds we have. And our minds are the sources of all of our ways of "minding" the world - all of our ways of seeing it and dealing with it, and all of our ways of being affected by it and by each other. That process is not self-correcting. By and large, we go where our minds lead us, where and what they make possible - and necessary. It is our minds that control what we see and feel, not us.

Everything of which we are conscious got there via communication with others or with ourselves.

Nobody is Born to be a Racist

In a recent interview about her new book, A Mercy, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison is quoted as writing in her book: "Nobody is born a racist."

I have the greatest respect and admiration for the mind of Toni Morrison, but maybe not the interviewer. But just so other readers won't be misled, it should be added that "Nobody is born to be judge of a racist."These are both cultural roles that have to be learned. Just because an anti-racist says so doesn't make "racism" a crime.

I can recall a research study back in the 50s that concluded there is evidence that racism is perpetuated as much or more by the victims of racism than by the racists who victimize them. This is along the lines that "it takes two to tango." There may have been some anti-antiracism in our recent election. Jack Welch assumed that Obama "won". One could still defend the position that Obama would not have won unless lots of voters wanted Bush to lose.

I would suppose that "Nobody is born a poet" or a celebrity either. Is a racist to be criticized for being a victim of his culture any more than a celebrity is to be celebrated for being tagged as a "celebrity?" We idolize our celebrities. We demonize (in the recent past) our racists. Fashions of mind change. if we hadn't had so many racists, Martin Luther King couldn't have been recognized for having his "dream."

Racism is not wrong because Nobel laureates or other celebrities say so. There are deeper reasons. Or is it all a war of popular opinion?

Hiring the "Bright Boys"

In his Execupundit.com blog (always worth reading) of November 19 of '08, Michael Wade observes how those "bright boys" who fail, rise again out of the ashes (so to speak). It leads one to wonder if the wrong hiring criteria are being used.

I'd bet that "education" and "experience" are two of the expedients. Still, I don't know who has nailed down precisely what education and/or experience has to do with future success in a future role.

An that, in turn, makes me wonder if the organizations or institutions doing the hiring are using a forward-looking role description for such positions as the "bright boys" might be hired into. I'd guess not. In which case, the fault likes with the organizations doing the hiring.

Here's another thought: Such people as the "bright boys" are hired to "make decisions" and to carry out other such activities. They are not held accountable at the outset for the consequences of their actions.

A pity, perhaps, but entirely consistent with the drift of our pop psyc culture.