Category: Thoughts

Moral Hazard

I had only been on the highway for a minute when I saw the flashing lights behind me.

I looked down at my speedometer. It read 80 miles per hour.

My hands started to tremble.

I was still in high school and had only been driving for a couple months. Yet, I’d already gotten myself into trouble.

I slowed down and pulled to the side of the road. As I waited for the officer to get out of his vehicle, I stared at my reflection in the rearview mirror.

I was in formal attire and my hair was neatly trimmed. Was I presentable enough to escape with a warning?

I saw the officer approaching. I was about to get my answer.

License and registration please.

I handed the documents over to the officer. His expression did not change.

I clocked you going 82 miles per hour back there under that bridge. You do realize that this is a work zone, don’t you? The speed limit is 45.

I had not realized that. Sure, there were orange cones sitting in the grassy median beside my vehicle. But I hadn’t seen any in the road. And I hadn’t seen a single construction vehicle either.

Still, it didn’t matter. I was getting written up.

The officer went back to his car to print out the citation. With the excessive speed violation and the work zone violation, I was on the hook for more than $1,000.

As I let the numbers on the ticket sink in, the officer gave two parting words of advice.

Slow down.

I drove home in a daze. I had no idea how I was going to pay the citation.

I broke the unhappy news to my parents as soon as I walked in the front door. They were justifiably furious.

Still, after a few moments, cooler heads prevailed. My father offered to cover the fine if I attended defensive driving classes.

I’d essentially be getting a clean slate.

I quickly accepted the terms. A couple of weeks later, I spent a morning in a hotel conference room watching presentations about how to check blind spots and safely pass vehicles. And soon after that, I was back on the road.

It was as if nothing had changed. And that was a problem.

Moral hazard.

This term is a hallmark of risk management circles.

It explains the behavior of those who act with impunity. Free of consequences for their actions, these individuals throw caution to the wind. And everyone else is saddled with the ensuing mess.

This was my experience after my father covered my hefty speeding ticket. I drove nearly as unburdened as I had before, leaving other drivers with little peace of mind.

On its face, Moral Hazard seems both reprehensible and avoidable. But the truth is far more complicated.

You see, institutional forces are out there to buffer us from risk’s implications. Not everyone has a father who will cover a $1,000 speeding ticket. But most drivers have insurance policies to cover the liability they might cause to other vehicles – and the people inside them – while behind the wheel.

The same principle has long held true for houses across our nation. Home insurance would offer financial protection against a variety of maladies. And until recently, this encouraged people to put down roots wherever they fancied.

And the business world? It’s littered with Moral Hazard too. Remember when the United States government bailed out major banks in 2008, and regional bank depositors in 2023? Those actions hardly deterred the risky behavior that preceded them.

The carte blanche – the blank slate – it’s meant to help us boldly plod ahead without being crippled by a one-off event.

But if it leaves us too bold for our own good, what’s the point?

Several months after my speeding ticket, I graduated from high school.

As I prepared to head off to college, I left the car behind. My father stated that I’d need to earn the right to drive around campus. The best way to achieve that right, he said, was with a few semesters of stellar grades.

About 18 months later, it was evident that I’d earned those stellar marks. So, at the end of winter break, my father accompanied me on the 1,300-mile journey to school.

Throughout that two-day trek, my father raved about how much I’d matured in college. He stated that I was ready for the responsibility of having a car.

But behind the wheel, I’d experienced little of that growth. The shadow of my speeding ticket had faded away, aided by the check my father had written. Bad habits were everywhere.

Moral Hazard had become entrenched. I was living on borrowed time.

And eventually, my luck ran out.

During my senior year of college, I totaled my car in a wreck on the highway. It was a humbling experience – and it left me without the means to get from my rental home to campus each day.

A few weeks later, my father surprised me once again. He’d be bringing one of the family sedans down to school that coming weekend and handing me the keys.

My graduation gift was arriving early. There was only one condition.

If I totaled this car, I’d be on my own.

I thought about how hard the past few weeks had been. I’d spend hours walking around campus with heavy textbooks turning my backpack into a boulder. And at the end of the day, I practically needed to beg friends for a ride home.

I thought about my time at the assessor’s lot a couple of days after the wreck. An insurance claims representative took one look at my mangled car and wrote me a paltry check. One that could never make me whole.

I thought about the accident itself. Of seeing the airbags deploy. Of that terrifying moment when I wasn’t sure if my friend in the passenger seat was alright.

I had seen the consequences of my actions. And I never wanted to experience them again.

So, I pledged to become a safer driver. And I’ve held true to that promise ever since.

Moral Hazard has no quarter here anymore.

Back in the 1980s, Nancy Reagan launched a crusade against drugs.

The First Lady sat in front of a camera in the White House and addressed the nation’s youth. She encouraged them to Just say no when illicit substances were bandied their way.

It’s tempting to view Moral Hazard in this way. If we reject it out of hand, we’ll act more responsibly.

But such temptations are nothing more than delusions. Moral Hazard is too embedded in our subconscious to be rooted out that easily.

It takes something more.

Ridding ourselves of this scourge requires a thought experiment. It demands that we actively consider the contours of the safety net around us – who builds it and who funds it. Then, it implores us to consider what would happen if that safety net wasn’t around – and to act accordingly.

These considerations consume plenty of mental bandwidth. They’re unpleasant. But they’re also necessary.

So, let’s take the initiative to open our eyes. To go the extra mile to banish our bad tendencies. And to lean into the responsibility that comes with risk.

We’ll all be better for it.

The Craft

I opened a fresh document on my computer as I prepared to start writing an article. This article.

But instead of seeing the usual blank page on my Microsoft Word interface, I saw a light gray icon and text near the top.

The text encouraged me to select the icon or tap a few keys to draft with Copilot.

Copilot is Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence engine. When enabled, it writes from scratch on the user’s behalf – a process known as Generative AI.

This whole idea of computers writing for humans is somewhat novel. But it’s already made scores of Microsoft users more productive – saving them time while increasing their output.

It would have been useful for me too. It had been a busy few days, and the thought of typing out some fresh thoughts seemed daunting.

But I wasn’t ceding the pen that easily.

I typed my first words onto the page. And I watched the gray icon and text disappear.

10,000 hours.

That’s the amount of practice time it takes to master a craft.

Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson published this finding in a research paper in 1993, referring to it as Deliberate Practice. Acclaimed author Malcolm Gladwell later highlighted Ericsson’s work in a bestselling book, leading many readers to consciously adopt Deliberate Practice.

A 10,000 hour commitment is no picnic. If someone were to spend 4 hours of their day – every single day – practicing a task, it would take them nearly 7 years to attain “world class mastery” of it. Factor in the days skipped for holidays, illnesses, and other commitments, and that timeline is likely to stretch beyond a decade.

And yet, many of those who have accepted the challenge have seen its rewards. James Earl Jones went from being a man with a stutter to a versatile actor with a booming voice. Mike Piazza went from being a 62nd round draft pick to a Hall of Fame baseball catcher.

Commitment can change our destiny, transforming the impossible into the probable. Persistence pays off.

But only if we let it.

On February 6, 2005, the New England Patriots took on the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl.

Just a few years earlier, such a matchup in the championship game of American football would have been improbable. The Patriots and Eagles spent most of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s as also-rans.

But fortunes had shifted with the turn of the millennium. Philadelphia had a creative head coach and an up-and-coming quarterback. And New England had Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.

Belichick was a football lifer – a champion assistant coach who had fumbled in a prior head coaching stint in Cleveland. But his fortunes had changed in Massachusetts. He took his spot on the sidelines seeking a third championship in a four-season span.

Brady was Belichick’s quarterback through that entire run of success – but an unlikely one in that. New England had selected him in the 6th round of the draft some years back, hoping he would serve as a backup signal caller. But an injury to the starter had vaulted Brady to the top spot early on, and he never relinquished the role.

Both Belichick and Brady appeared to be Deliberate Practice success stories. And yet, they somehow made the business of winning high-profile football games look easy.

Perhaps that’s why a certain commercial – shown to millions of viewers during a break in the action – seemed to fit like a glove.

The commercial was for Staples, then a dominant office supplies store. It showed a student, a rancher, a young parent, and a surgeon – all facing challenging situations. Each of them pressed a red button that read Easy on it, presumably offering a resolution.

The message was straightforward. Life could be challenging, but procuring office supplies didn’t have to be. Staples made it look as easy as New England Patriots did while winning championships.

In the months after the Super Bowl, Staples started making replicas of the Easy button. Americans put them next to their computer keyboards, leaning into the mantra.

The Easy button craze was upon us.

Two decades have passed since that iconic Super Bowl ad. But the more I hear about Generative AI – and the more I see people flocking to it – the more I’m brought back to the Easy button craze it yielded.

Having someone else tackle the difficult and the monotonous is a shared dream. It reduces friction and leaves more room for joy.

Still, there are clear dangers to this approach.

For one thing, the resource we hand off to might not prove trustworthy. This has proven true at times with Generative AI, which has committed some notable blunders.

But beyond that, ceding tasks to the machines jeopardizes deliberate practice.

Generative AI, you see, can unlock enhanced performance in a fraction of the 10,000 hours it takes us. But in doing so, it robs us of opportunities to work through problems, prove our resilience, and hone our craft.

And that’s hardly insignificant.

You’re a good writer.

My mother told me this repeatedly back in 2005.

I was in high school back then, trying to figure out my future. Getting accepted to college was the immediate goal, but then what? I had no idea what I wanted to study there, let alone what I would want to do for a vocation afterward.

My mother left those decisions to me. But she kept dropping hints about my writing prowess.

I didn’t understand the praise. Writing always felt arduous to me. And my grades on essay assignments were never exemplary.

Still, I ended up focusing on writing in college – initially as a film major and later as a journalism student. That led to three years in the news media and several more in the realm of content marketing.

As the years passed by, it was getting harder to dismiss my writing abilities. After all, that skill was now putting a roof over my head and food on my table.

Yet, I still felt the urge to perfect my craft. To practice, iterate, and grow on my own terms.

That’s what led me to launch what is now Ember Trace nearly a decade ago. It gave me a forum to share my thoughts and reflections. But it also allowed me to practice my craft, week in and week out.

This process hasn’t always been peachy. But I’m a better writer and a stronger person for it.

And that’s why I didn’t even consider clicking on that gray button in Microsoft Word and letting Copilot do the work.

Not this time. Not any time.

There’s value in honing our craft. In sticking to it and doing the dirty work.

I’m committed to that pursuit. Let’s hope that I’m not alone.

The Familiar

The air was cold, and the wind was whipping. I shivered a bit as I stared at a row of pine trees.

I must have been 4 years old, maybe 5. And I was tagging along with my godmother and godfather as they shopped for a Christmas tree.

My godparents didn’t have kids of their own yet, so they were extra keen on involving me in the process.

Which tree do you think is best for us to bring home? my godmother asked.

My reply was filled with fear and panic.

I…I don’t know. They just look like trees. And I’m cold.

My godfather must have been cold as well. Or else he’d seen enough.

He and my godmother quickly conferred, before summoning over the attendant.

They pointed to their top choice. And the attendant prepared it for the long car journey to come.

We had taken two vehicles to this Christmas Tree Farm out in rural Connecticut.

My parents, my sister, and I were in one. My godparents and the tree in the other.

And on the long drive back to the big city, I peppered my parents with questions.

We didn’t have a Christmas tree at home, you see. All I knew was that we’d go to my godparents’ house late in December, and there would be an elaborately decorated tree in the living room. Then, the next time we visited, the tree would be gone.

I was too young to connect the dots. After all, I had no frame of reference.

So, my father spelled it out for me. He explained that Christmas trees were generally grown out in the country – preferably somewhere dry and hilly.

As fall set in, many got cut down and shipped to the big city. That way, the trees would be easier for urbanites to buy, set up, and decorate.

But not all trees got an early axe. Sometimes, as the air got chilly, people would come straight to the farm to select their tree and haul it back home. The experience was more authentic that way. And the tree would likely stay fresh throughout the holiday season.

Wait, so there are people who just grow Christmas trees? I asked.

Yes, my father replied. They prepare all year for one day. But that day is so big that they do quite well for themselves.

This was a lot for me to take in. So, I changed the subject. And never thought of it again.

Until now.

Where does America grow its Christmas trees?

It’s not really a question that’s top of mind. Even though hundreds of millions of people from coast to coast add a tree to their home each December, the where from hardly seems relevant to many.

But not to me. I looked it up.

It seems that thousands of small farms like that one in Connecticut still do grow Christmas trees these days. But the bulk of America’s holiday décor comes from two locations – the forests of Oregon and the mountains of North Carolina.

In a normal year, each region produces about 2 million Christmas trees.

But this is not a normal year.

I’m writing this column roughly three months after a hurricane trudged through the Smoky Mountains. The unprecedented weather event flooded Western North Carolina, leading to widespread death and destruction.

And that hurricane also disrupted the Christmas tree supply chain.

Fortunately, the short-term impacts of this particular development haven’t been too severe. There haven’t been widespread reports of Christmas trees being sold out or broadly unavailable. Oregon and the other growing locations have picked up the slack.

But this is only one year. It’s hard to forecast what the long-term implications of this devastating storm.

Will the Christmas tree farmers of Western North Carolina be able to rebuild and regrow? Will children in the Southeast still trek to the mountains with their parents and help pick out the perfect tree? Will another hurricane roll in and wipe the slate clean again?

It’s all up in the air.

The Christmas tree is not the end-all-be-all of the holiday season. The gifts under the tree and the people around it matter more.

Still, it’s far from insignificant.

In fact, I’d argue that the Christmas tree is one of the three most prominent symbols of the season, along with Santa hats and multicolored lights.

The tree is universally familiar. And that familiarity brings us a sense of inner peace.

That’s why so many people go through the motions of hauling a tree into their living rooms each winter. That’s why they decorate those trees with lights and ornaments. And that’s why public trees – such as the gigantic one in New York’s Rockefeller Center – become tourist attractions as the season’s chill sets in.

There are many staples we’ve let go of over the years. We no longer send faxes or travel by horse and buggy.

But the Christmas tree tradition? I can’t envision a shift away from that. Not now, not ever.

It needs to work. But how far will we go to ensure it does?

There was a time once when a large swath of us lived off the land.

Farming, hunting, ranching, coal mining — those were a means of sustenance. Both in terms of goods sold and consumed.

A bad year meant more than a light piggy bank back then. It meant going hungry through the fall or shivering through the winter.

Christmas trees were a staple back then too. But rural settlers were far more likely to cut down the nearest fresh pine themselves. And as such, they understood what it took to bring the joy of the holiday through their front doors.

Society has shifted since those days. Most of us are city dwellers or suburbanites now. We’re more likely to buy our supplies from a store or an Internet browser. And we rarely give a second thought as to how those goods arrived on our doorstep.

Oftentimes, this approach is sensible. We already have plenty to concern ourselves with. The intricacies of supply chains needn’t be added to the list.

But in this case, at this moment, it might be wise to reconsider.

The profound joy that we experience this time of year – it doesn’t just emerge out of thin air. There are plenty of people working hard to provide it to us.

We owe it to them – and to ourselves – to take a closer look. To drive out to a tree farm to pick our prize. To support a farmer waylaid by Mother Nature. Or to otherwise honor the regions of our great nation that help make our holidays merry and bright.

The familiar matters this time of year. Let’s show how much it does.

The Boolean Trap

I got into my SUV and turned the ignition.

But before I threw it into reverse, I tapped a button on my smartphone.

The phone was sitting in the one of the cupholders beside me. But thanks to the magic of Bluetooth technology, it could stream music or podcasts straight through the car speakers.

I could be my own DJ. And I often was.

But not today.

The Bluetooth, you see, was not connecting properly. Sure, the little screen on the center console of my vehicle said it was connected, but no audio was streaming.

I set my sights on fixing the issue.

I toggled the Bluetooth switch on my phone’s settings off and on. I turned off the SUV and refired the ignition. I rebooted my phone.

By now, I’d wasted enough time troubleshooting that I was late for work. So, I put the vehicle in reverse and made the drive in silence.

That evening, I picked the thread up anew.

Sitting at my dining room table, I fired up my laptop, headed to the automaker’s support website and searched for help documentation.

It took a few minutes of dogged searching even to find my entertainment system on the site. The automaker had moved to a different system in newer vehicles, and most articles were for that system.

And the few support documents for my system were useless. They encouraged me to try what I’d already attempted. Plus, they site provided no way of reporting any issues that hadn’t been covered.

It felt as if the automaker was thumbing its nose at me. All the possible issues with this entertainment system are on this page. And if you find something else, you’re the issue.

I felt offended. I was enraged. I screamed into the void.

I had now wasted countless hours on this issue. I’d searched and toggled and stressed myself into oblivion — all to find a resolution to something that was working just a day earlier.

And yet, there was one thing I hadn’t attempted — resetting my car’s entertainment system.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. I’d gone through the settings menu on the console extensively. I’d combed those support documents until I had them memorized. No master reset option seemed to exist.

So, the next morning, I called the closest dealership and made a service appointment.

When I brought my SUV in, I explained the issue in full. The service tech listened intently. But he furrowed his brow when I mentioned the words console reset.

There’s not really a simple way to do that, he explained. I could unplug the battery for 10 to 15 seconds, and then reconnect it. That’s a hard reset. But I can’t guarantee it will fix the issue.

It was worth a shot. I gave the tech the go-ahead to try. He took my keys and drove the vehicle over to a service bay.

A short time later, I got the SUV back. Sitting in the dealership parking lot, I tried to connect my phone via Bluetooth. The connection went through.

My nightmare was over.

As children, we learn about prominent innovative thinkers. People whose innovations and discoveries have direct impacts on our lives.

Albert Einstein is synonymous with defining the mass-energy equivalence. Sir Isaac Newton is acclaimed for conveying the laws of gravity. Thomas Edison is renowned for inventing the light bulb. And Henry Ford is feted for revolutionizing the automobile.

George Boole doesn’t sit on this Mount Rushmore. But perhaps he should.

Boole was a 19th century English mathematician who didn’t even get to celebrate his 50th birthday. But in his short lifespan, he unfurled something that has come to underpin all corners of western society — Boolean logic.

Boolean logic is an algebraic system that contains two variables – true and false. It judges mathematical expressions by their attributes and classifies them accordingly.

If the expression contains a desired element, it gets coded as a 1. If it doesn’t, it gets coded as a 0.

That series of 1’s and 0’s can blaze a trail through complicated equations, getting to a final answer step-by-step.

If you think 1’s and 0’s sound like computer source code, you’re onto something. Computer systems have been built on Boolean logic since the 1930s, and the associated if-then logic is now synonymous with that technology.

Perhaps that’s why we don’t give George Boole his due. Or perhaps the century between his discovery and the computer age caused us to lose the thread.

Regardless, we are fully immersed in the Boolean world today. We’re accustomed to navigating true-false strings and if-then statements to troubleshoot just about anything, from our health to the strange noise coming from the refrigerator.

This works well. Until it doesn’t.

In the early 2000s, a technology journalist named Chris Anderson introduced a new theory to the world

Anderson saw how the computer age and the growth of the Internet had democratized the decisions consumers could make. In the Golden Era of network television, Americans had three options of what to watch on a given evening. But now, people around the globe could enter any search query they wanted into Google.

These searches tended to fall into a normal distribution, or a Bell Curve pattern. A small number of search terms got most of the volume.

But those low frequency searches at the ends of the curve, they mattered too. Search engines still returned results for them. And savvy businesses had ample opportunities to serve these audiences as well.

Anderson’s theory came to be known as The Long Tail. He wrote a WIRED article and a book about it. And many business professionals came to treat it with reverence.

Including me.

Early in my marketing career, I used long tail theories to create content for my clients’ websites. I was working at a startup agency at the time, supporting several small home remodeling firms.

A few years earlier, those businesses would have relied on the Yellow Pages and word of mouth referrals to stay viable. But thanks to The Long Tail and digital marketing, they now had a sustainable path to growth.

Long tail theory succeeded in filling the gaps of Boolean logic. It acknowledged that the world is messier than if-then statements can count for. And it resolved to clean up the mess.

But as technology has evolved and the economy has fluctuated, long tail theory has faded into the background. Innovators have favored tightening the Boolean engine over sweeping up the bits it misses.

This is what led to my odyssey to get my vehicle’s entertainment system fixed. There was no roadmap for me to follow because if-then logic didn’t account for the issue.

Out of sight, out of mind. Until it wasn’t.

You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole.

This proverbial wisdom has held for generations. And despite the attempts of innovators, streamliners, and futurists, it’s sure to endure for many more.

You see, ceding all infrastructure to Boolean theory is not a viable solution. It’s a trap.

Long tail concerns will not evaporate when swept under the rug. They will fester, agitate, and afflict. They will drive us to frustration, trust loss — or worse.

This corrosion has gone on far too long already. And it’s imperative that we keep the rot from settling in further.

It’s time that we give an audience to the edge cases once again. It’s time to inject independent judgement into the fringes of the logic machine. It’s time to account for all the outcomes we can imagine and consider solutions for the ones we can’t.

This process will be clunky and inefficient. It won’t provide the two true outcomes we’ve grown so accustomed to seeing in our systems.

But it will remove the daylight between our lived experience and the systems we rely on. It will allow us to optimize our outcomes at every turn.

And shouldn’t that be what matters?

Boolean logic is a great thing. But it needn’t be the only thing.

Let’s go for better.

Learning Experiences

It was a simple dish.

Eggs, sliced potatoes, and onions – all bonded together and cooked in a skillet. Kind of like a quiche without the cheese.

The delicacy was known as Tortilla Española. I’d sampled it at restaurants across Madrid as a teenager. Now, as an adult, I wanted to prepare it in my own kitchen.

I recalled my father making the dish from scratch a few times after my return from Spain. So, I asked him for the recipe. Then I gathered the requisite and ingredients.

I peeled the potatoes and cut them proportionally. I diced the onions. I scrambled some eggs in a bowl.

I added olive oil to a cast iron skillet and fired up the stove. I poured the ingredients into the skillet and let them settle.

I took another glance at my father’s recipe. The next task was to flip the tortilla over, so that it could cook evenly.

But how?

I had a glass lid on the skillet, but it wasn’t stable enough to stand on its own while inverted. And I didn’t have a similar-sized pan to flip the tortilla.

The sizzling sound from the skillet reminded me that there was no time to run to the store for supplies. I was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.

I took the silicone spatula and dug into the bottom of the tortilla. I lifted it up, rotated my wrist…and caused a mess all over the stovetop.

Perhaps the tortilla wasn’t quite set enough. Perhaps my wrist flick wasn’t all that precise.

Regardless, the solid disk had disintegrated into an incongruous pile of egg and potato bits, with some onions mixed in. Most of it was still in the skillet, but some had landed around it.

My dish was ruined.

I did my best to salvage what was left – letting the eggs cook through and then consuming some of it. The rest went into Pyrex containers stashed in the refrigerator.

I’d be having my failure for dinner for nights to come.

Not long after, I told my father what happened.

Did you consider flipping the tortilla onto a plate? he asked.

I hadn’t.

I’d made a multi-meal mess and wasted hours of prep work. All because I didn’t pull a plate out from the cabinet during the moment of truth.

I was filled with regret at first. But then I remembered another of my father’s axioms.

You can make a mistake. Just don’t make the same one twice.

This was not a failure. It was a learning experience.

It was on me to grow from the experience. To do better next time around.

As it turns out, next time looked a bit different. I never did make Tortilla Española in my kitchen again. But my cooking habits for similarly complex dishes were vastly improved

No longer was I blinded by the mouth-watering outcomes of my craft. I instead devoted extra effort to preparation.

That way, I wouldn’t panic when the burners were on. And I’d be better able to adapt.

I don’t believe I would have been able to lean into that approach if everything hadn’t happened the way it did.

The botched flip. The meals upon meals of messed up results. My father’s introduction of a ready alternative. All helped me to internalize the lesson and rise from the ashes of disaster.

The story still has its scars. I cringed a bit while writing it just now.

But I have no regrets.

What is school for?

Marketing guru asked this question at the onset of a TEDx talk some years back.

Godin went on to explain how the modern iteration of American education came about.

Public school districts and standardized tests were not the natural evolutions of one-room classrooms and reclusive boarding academies. They were the vehicles of industrialist ambition, meant to confer obedience and consistency across the youth population.

The modern system of schooling seemed sensible in the early 20th century, when scores of pupils parlayed their diplomas into factory jobs. It also served its purpose in the middle of that century, when vigilance in the face of nuclear war was paramount.

But obedience and consistency seem antiquated these days, in an era where college dropouts can create trillion-dollar companies and financial strategists tend to think outside the box.

Yet, the top-down, cookie-cutter educational experience continues to proliferate. Children are expected to maintain excellence from as early as Kindergarten. There is no other option.

It’s all a bit difficult for me to comprehend.

You see, my own youth is merely decades in the rearview. But it might as well have been in the Stone Age compared to the present reality.

My teachers gave me a fair amount of free reign in the classroom and the recess yard through elementary school. I was supervised, sure – even graded on homework I turned in. But I wasn’t restrained.

The goal was to let me stumble upon knowledge organically, and therefore absorb it fully. This meant literal stumbles were accepted, not shunned.

So, I made mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Both in the classroom and out of it.

But by feeling the consequences of these missteps, I was able to move beyond them. I was able to learn, grow, and adapt. And I was able to keep the sting of regret holding me back.

It’s a throughline that carried directly to adulthood. It drove my response to the Great Tortilla Española Disaster in my kitchen, and countless other setbacks.

And it’s becoming a novelty.

What happens when the leash is too short?

We don’t need to imagine the answer. Examples are all around us.

Many of my peers now have children of their own. And in talking with them, I get a distinct sense that they’re under a microscope.

They’re expected to provide the best experience for their kids at all times – or else risk the branding of bad parent. And they’re expected to short circuit any signs of failure in their offspring.

Failure, you see, represents divergence. It puts daylight between a child and their peers. It forges a gap between expected marks and mandated ones when it comes to reading, arithmetic, and reasoning. It’s the first skid down a slippery slope.

Modern parents don’t intuitively believe this, of course. None of them hold their infants and muse They better not screw anything up in 65 months from now, or they’re toast.

No, this edict is foisted upon parents by their children’s schools, which are chock full of militant rigor and ongoing assessment.

Add in the societal pressure to bring these values home, and parents find themselves in an impossible position. It’s as if they’re meant to choreograph their children’s lives, rather than provide sturdy guardrails for growth.

This might all seem mundane. But the long-term effects could be catastrophic.

Indeed, what happens if an entire generation is shielded from the consequences of failure? How will they develop resilience?

I shudder to think about how the next generation might handle a kitchen mishap down the road – let alone anything more substantial.

Adversity is a great teacher. It’s the only real instructor for moments like these. Moments that we will inevitably encounter in our lifetimes.

And yet, adversity is being kept out of reach. Left on the top shelf of the cabinet until it’s too late for us to locate it.

Let’s change that.

Let’s stop being so allergic to failure and shackled by regret. Let’s start reframing our missteps as learning experiences instead. And let’s teach future generations to do the same.

Sometimes wrong is the first step to right. Commit to the journey.

Consolidated Options

It was darn near Pavlovian.

As the players jogged off the field and into the dugout, the fans in the stands focused their eyes on the scoreboard high above the right field wall.

It was cap shuffle time.

An image of a baseball appeared on the scoreboard. Then suddenly, a stylized baseball cap appeared, covering it up. Two identical-looking caps emerged on the big screen to flank it.

Music blared from the stadium speakers as the baseball caps shuffled around the screen. All the while, the fans tried to keep track of the cap with the ball underneath it.

Finally, the music stopped. The baseball caps froze in place across the scoreboard, the numbers 1, 2, and 3 displayed underneath them.

At the top of the screen, a question now appeared. Which cap has the ball?

There was a momentary pause. Then a murmur rose to a dim roar.

Two! Two! Two!

A few seconds later, the cap over the number 2 on the scoreboard lifted. The baseball re-appeared.

The crowd went wild.

The cap shuffle has long been a staple at ballparks.

It’s long proven to be a cost-effective way to keep fans engaged, even when the ballplayers are off the field. And it’s an easy contest to win.

Now, that’s not to say the shuffle is easy to follow. The scoreboard maneuvers can even flummox the fans with the keenest eyes and sharpest attention spans.

But those who lose the ball get a second chance. With only three options to choose from, guessing is simple. And the roar of the crowd can nudge those guesses into the educated column.

Indeed, I’ve rarely kept track of the winning cap when I’ve gone to the ballpark. I’ve guessed nearly every time. But I’ve rarely guessed wrong.

The wisdom of the crowd carried me through.

The cap shuffle is just a bit of amusement. No more. No less.

But it illustrates an entrenched element our society – The Rule of Three.

The Rule of Three is a principle that was first articulated by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in the 1970s. It states that most corners of commerce, there are only three significant competitors. Think Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors in the automotive space. Or Burger King, McDonald’s and Wendy’s in the fast-food sector.

The market might have started out with more competitors in these industries. But over time, those three frontrunners rose from the fray.

Such market domination has as much to do with human nature as business strategy. You see, our brains can only consider three to four options at a time. We simply cannot process a Big Six of automakers, fast-food proprietors, or nearly anything else.

But the Rule of Three only partially explains the world we live in. For while there might technically be three dominant options in just about any industry, only two of them tend to get the lion’s share of attention.

Consider soft drinks. In Texas, Dr Pepper is an immensely popular option. But once you leave the state, it’s barely relevant. Coca-Cola and Pepsi carry the mail.

The same is true in the world of computer operating systems. Linux is one of the top three options in that realm, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Apple and Microsoft.

Binary choice reigns supreme. For better or for worse.

The better refers to reliability for consumers, and a predictable revenue flow for providers. When there are only two dominant choices, each party knows what to expect.

But the worse feeds directly from those advantages. With so few dominant options, consumers must contend with the trappings of monopoly power – including higher prices and lower levels of innovation. And the main providers must contend with each other – leading to polarization and its associated ugliness.

Sound familiar?

Yes, American politics also follows the Rule of Three. Two parties have reigned supreme for generations, while a smattering of independent politicians have sat on the periphery. This dynamic has made rhetoric more extreme and consensus harder to come by with each passing year.

Representative democracy only seems to embody the most sinister corners of American existence. Elections feel like a choice for the least bad option.

And when those perceived least bad selections make it to the seat of power, precious little gets done. Accomplishments requires compromise. And compromise is a bridge too far.

This quagmire has proved demoralizing to many Americans. And the murmurs of their discontent have now risen to a dull roar.

Give us more choices, they say. Get rid of the two-party system.

It’s a seemingly sensible plea. But appearances can be deceiving.

What would a multi-party political scene look like?

We don’t have to dive into fantasyland to imagine this. Real world examples exist an ocean away.

Countries such as Germany, France, Israel, and Australia have relied on a parliamentary system for governance. That means citizens vote for parties, rather than individual politicians.

There are plenty of parties for voters to choose from, and diverse parliamentary bodies. To govern effectively in this environment, parties have traditionally formed coalitions with relatively like-minded legislators – offering a smidge of compromise in order to pool votes.

But recently, that strategy has become less of a sure thing. Voters in some of those nations have given fringe parties with extreme views a seat at the table. And traditional parties have focused on differentiating themselves in response.

Consensus has been harder to find. Coalitions have been fewer and further between. And government productivity has gone down.

The byproducts of this shift are far from pretty. Economies have stagnated. Protests have proliferated. And snap elections have become commonplace.

This is what politics would look like in America without the two-party system. But since voters select individual politicians in our nation, the dysfunction would be on another level.

Without compromise, coalitions, or consensus, bureaucracy could grind to a halt. With gridlock overwhelming funding deliberations, government shutdowns would be inevitable. Without a shared sense of accountability, dereliction of duty would weaken the nation.

Expansive choice is no panacea. Far from it.

It’s time we get used to that fact.

When I was young, my parents would ask me a question each evening.

Do you want one bedtime story, or two?

Bedtime was non-negotiable. But I still had some say over the proceedings.

I often went with the second choice. I’d listen intently to a rendition of one children’s book, then another. And by the end, I’d be down for the count.

I didn’t give this ritual much thought at the time. But I sure do now.

You see, I don’t have children of my own. But I know that kids can be a handful after the sun sets.

Crankiness, mania, hyperactivity – all are possible as youthful energy wanes. Children need their rest, but good luck getting them to acquiesce to it.

This is why my parents’ bedtime system was so brilliant. By consolidating options, they made the wind-down manageable for everyone. And they set me up for success.

I think the same is true for consolidated options in general. We might want more than Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or Republicans and Democrats. We may yearn to see 7 caps shuffling on the scoreboard.

But what we’ve got is manageable. What we’ve got is reliable. What we’ve got is familiar.

It might not work to our specifications. It might barely work at all. But it works.

And that’s no small thing.

Tragic Misconceptions

It was a jarring sight.

A Toyota sedan missing all four wheels. The disk-like rotors were fully exposed to the elements, as a small rock kept the rest of the chassis off the ground.

Some bad actors had stolen away with the tires and hubs in the dead of the night. An inner-city occurrence that was all too frequent.

Only this car wasn’t in the inner city. It was parallel parked along a tree lined street in a suburban neighborhood. My neighborhood.

Oh God, I mused as I passed the disabled vehicle. Am I safe here?

I thought back to a few nights earlier, when I’d taken an evening stroll on that same street. I don’t remember seeing the Toyota sedan parked there yet. But I don’t remember seeing much of anything at all.

You see, the streetlights were out in that area. The sidewalk was pitch black.

I wasn’t worried about criminals attacking at that moment. I was more concerned about tripping over a rogue tree branch or colliding with an aloof squirrel.

But now, I recognized the error of my ways.

I should have been more vigilant. I should have reported the extinguished streetlights – on that street and every other across the neighborhood. I should have been prepared to face down thugs on every corner.

Or maybe not.

The disabled car sat on that rock for a couple of weeks before it was towed away.

All the while, I scanned the neighborhood for other signs of mischief.

I started walking the neighborhood with a flashlight, protecting myself against a potential ambush. I perused postings on Ring and Nextdoor, looking for the patterns of local perpetrators. I pondered enrolling in a Concealed Carry course.

But trouble never came to my doorstep. Just like lightning, it only struck once.

This left me in a strange purgatory.

My neighborhood had proven to be about as safe after the wheel theft as it was before it. But that incident was too brazen to ignore. It had skewed my judgment.

No matter what the numbers stated, I could never truly feel safe there again.

Wrong place, wrong time.

It’s the predominant explanation for tragedy.

We do not tend to court misfortune. Yet, it sometimes finds us anyway — in the most random fashion possible.

There’s no way to truly rationalize these brutal occurrences. Wrong place, wrong time is all we have for an explanation.

But there’s a hidden implication in this statement. Namely, an acknowledgement that a right place and a right time exist somewhere else.

The quest for that somewhere else has served as our societal North Star for generations.

It has led us from colonial encampments to the wild frontier. It has led us back to the cities and then out to the suburbs. It has spurred innovation and infrastructure, but also White Flight and gentrification.

Yes, the legacy of the quest for somewhere else is a complicated one. For the world is not as straightforward as we’d like it to be. And the green grass on the other side of the fence is sure to turn brown once we trample all over it.

Our quest for utopia is a recipe for disaster. And yet, we commit ourselves to baking the cake.

We condemn the Southside, the South Bronx, and South Central. We exalt the fancy enclaves with the elite public schools and the well-heeled police forces.

We wrap ourselves in the illusion of safety. And when the veneer is stripped away, we feel the full weight of the betrayal. Just as I did when I saw the wheel-less Toyota sedan a mere 500 feet from where I lay my head at night.

It’s an insidious pattern. And we’re to blame for it.

Our society is obsessed with rankings.

We’re always eager to see how the football team we root for, the college we attended, or the price we paid for gasoline compares to the other options out there.

Fortunately, there are several organizations out there to satiate our list-mania. One of them is WalletHub.

The personal finance company is best known for its credit card recommendation tools. But it also publishes rankings of the safest cities in America.

WalletHub’s most recent annual edition released a few weeks before I sat down to write this article. So, naturally, I gave it a thorough read.

The first few cities didn’t lead to any raised eyebrow. They were in predominantly rural states that featured low populations.

But when I saw the city ranked #6 on the list, I gasped.

That city was Yonkers, New York.

While I’ve been a Texan for my entire adult life, I spent my childhood in Yonkers. I grew up in a decently-sized house with a front yard and a backyard — luxuries most residents of nearby New York City did not have.

The surrounding neighborhood was hilly, shaded by tall trees that dumped bushels of leaves every fall. The streets were quiet. The neighbors were too.

It had all the appearances of a nice place. But appearances can be deceiving.

When I was just 6 years old, someone stole my father’s car from right in front of our house. A few years later, a nearby home was burglarized. Shortly after that, someone drove across the front lawn of our across-the-street neighbor before plowing into a retaining wall.

It was all more than a bit unsetting.

I wanted to believe that my home was safe. That I didn’t have to worry when I closed my eyes at night.

But each time the blue police lights lit up our street, I doubted that premise. And each time my father installed an alarm system or trimmed the hedges a little lower, uncertainty proliferated.

I moved away from Yonkers many years ago. And my parents eventually sold my childhood home.

Several months after they left the city, a man in a parked car shot a Yonkers police officer approaching his vehicle. The officer’s partner returned fire, leading to an extended shootout. Terrified onlookers told news reporters that it felt like the wild west.

The whole incident took place on the same block where I grew up. If I were still there, I could have watched it unfold from my childhood bedroom.

Yet, despite that shooting and all the criminal activity I witnessed before it, Yonkers found its validation. Despite its star-crossed legacy as the site of the fire that killed Malcolm X’s widow, the arrest of the Son of Sam killer, and the early misdeeds of the rapper DMX, Yonkers was ultimately lauded as a beacon of safety.

What gives?

Signal and noise.

It’s the central paradox of statistics.

As we accumulate data, we yearn to find meaning in its patterns. But some of those associations ultimately don’t hold water. They’re the noise that the proven conclusions — the signal — must compete with.

The officer-involved shooting near my childhood home is a prime example of this. It spooked the neighborhood, no doubt. But it also was the first time in 30 years that a Yonkers Police Officer was shot in the line of duty.

In the grand scheme of things, it was not signal. It was noise.

The prior criminal incidents I witnessed on that block also fell into the noise column. While each was unnerving, they took place far too infrequently to cause real concern.

My childhood neighborhood, it seems, has long been a predominantly safe place. It just wasn’t perfectly safe.

The same can be said about my current neighborhood. And many others across our nation.

It’s that variance that gets me — that gets many of us.

Safety is such an existential need that we seize upon any sign of imperfection. One lapse is too many, and two is catastrophic.

But this trend is not feasible or productive. It leads us to overestimate bad outcomes and succumb to paranoia. It fosters tragic misconceptions of the places we frequent, and the people we share those places with.

We need to let go of those delusions, and to choose a more sustainable path instead. We need to recognize the risk of a wheel theft or a crash into a nearby retaining wall for what it is – low, not zero – and calibrate our responses accordingly. We need to stop casting out the good with the bad.

This will be an uncomfortable shift for many of us. Myself included.

But it’s a necessary one.

We will never find a true sense of security without making peace with our surroundings.

It’s starts with us. Let’s get to it.

Constants and Variables

His name was Glauber Contessoto.

Sporting wildly matted hair and a thick beard, he stood out from the crowd. Mostly because of his nickname – The Dogecoin Millionaire.

Contessoto, you see, had gone to the extreme with his investing strategy. He had stopped focusing on stocks, bonds, and savings to grow wealth. And he’d put his money into Dogecoin instead.

It was an odd strategy.

Dogecoin, you see, had started as a parody of the emerging Cryptocurrency trend. It was a tender sporting the image of a snarky Shiba Inu.

Much like hippies trading in beads, Dogecoin was not meant to be taken seriously by a wide audience. It was mostly a meme.

But Conessoto didn’t care. He was inspired by the potential of Cryptocurrency. And he went all.

His timing could not have been better. Contessoto’s $250,000 investment grew fourfold in roughly 70 days, making him an overnight millionaire.

This would have been a good time to cash out. To stash the winnings in a nest egg or reinvest them in traditional markets.

But Contessoto didn’t do that. He doubled down on his bet on Dogecoin. And he actively encouraged other investors to follow suit.

What followed next was all too predictable. Cryptocurrency markets saw a correction, and the value of Dogecoin started to plummet. The fall wasn’t quite as steep as the rise, but the tender ultimately lost 90% of its value.

It was enough to make a Dogecoin Millionaire suddenly worth only $100,000. Contessoto’s strategy had most certainly not paid off.

When I was a teenager, I’d often head to the convenience store down the street from school. I’d reach into my wallet for some allowance money, trading that cash for a newspaper and a bottle of Coca-Cola. And I’d stuff those items in my backpack.

I didn’t ride the bus in those days. So, when the last class of the day was over, I’d park myself somewhere in the lobby. I’d pull the brick-like cell phone out of my backpack, raise the antenna and dial my mother.

I’m ready for a ride home, I’d exclaim. Then, I’d put the phone back in my bag and pull out the newspaper and Coca-Cola. By the time my mother arrived, I’d read most of the articles and finished all of the soda.

These days, the waiting game is far less prevalent. I have my own vocation, my own transportation, my own living quarters.

And yet, I do occasionally find myself sitting in the lobby – waiting for a doctor’s appointment or to board a flight. Just like the old days, warding off boredom is my responsibility.

But instead of reaching into a bulky backpack for a newspaper and a bottle of soda, I now reach for my pocket. My mobile phone now fits there with ease. And it can do so much more than dial numbers.

Indeed, I can read news articles, schedule a dinner order, check the weather forecast, and even watch the ballgame – all from my phone screen. And if I need to buy something, I can do it with a tap of the device as well.

My smartphone is now one of the most essential accessories I have. Much of my daily life routes through its screen. And because of that, I always ensure it’s well protected, well maintained, and well charged.

This quantum leap in functionality hit the market in a flash. Apple released its first iPhone while I was still technically a teenager, and it contained many of the same capabilities back then as it does now.

I was only a handful of years removed from holding court in the school lobby back then. I probably could have ditched the newspaper for my phone screen.

But I didn’t.

You see, much like others, I was amazed by what Steve Jobs presented. But I was also disoriented by it.

What changes would I need to make to my daily habits with this new technology in hand? Which rituals would stay, and which would be usurped? How would I measure my own progress in the new normal?

These were tough questions without ready-made answers. So, I waited three years to get my first iPhone. And it took me three more years to cede my entertainment and commerce needs to its mighty screen.

Solve for X.

Those three words were prevalent in algebra class.

I’d long been accustomed to moving in straight lines with my studies. To memorize these facts, to read those chapters, to divide this by that.

Now, I was being asked to solve a mystery. To use the principles of arithmetic to determine what number the letter X represented.

I was annoyed at first. Why was I being asked to go through all this rigamarole? What purpose did it serve?

Perhaps sensing this frustration, my teacher gathered the class.

Algebra, the teacher stated, was not just about solving for x. It was about what X and the numbers around it stood for.

X represented a variable. Something that could be altered as circumstances shifted.

But the numbers around it? Those were constants. No matter what value X held, they would stay the same.

Deductive reasoning relied on both factors, my teacher explained. Change was an ongoing, volatile element of our world. But we could best understand its effects by holding something constant as we sought to isolate the variables.

This description continues to resonate today. In fact, it illustrates my slow adoption of the smartphone ecosystem.

You see, the iPhone might have been able to combine three pieces of technology – and one newspaper – from my arsenal instantly. But it would be a journey to get me there.

I’d need to weigh the changes against the constants to keep from getting lost. So, instead of trying everything at once, I’d adopt features one at a time.

So, my music listening habits would be the first to change, followed by my shopping habits, and my news reading ones. Such sequencing would allow me to systematically address each constant. To try each adaption on for size, and only proceed ahead when comfortable.

Moseying down the pool steps took longer than a cannonball off the diving board would have. But it served me well.

There’s a lot of clamoring these days about disruptive innovation, hot trends, and emergent opportunities. Futurists get plaudits. Nascent solutions get buzz. And figures like The Dogecoin Millionaire get rich.

It can seem as if leaning into the next big craze is the best way forward. As if changing all the variables at once is our only true path.

It’s not.

There is value in expanding our horizons, to be sure. But we’re more likely to maximize that value if we keep some constants in place along the journey.

This is the pattern of change we’re most comfortable with. It’s the pace of change that most fits our natural rhythms. And it’s the approach to change that best helps us hedge against risk.

This approach might not yield us new status, riches, or acclaim. But it will keep us from losing our ability to reason along the way.

And that is certainly a gift worth maintaining.

So next time you’re feeling the pressure to dive in, take a moment to consider the constants. And govern yourself accordingly.

Power Dynamics

As I stared at my phone’s home screen, frustration washed over my face.

The neat grid of app icons I’d perused just hours earlier was now an imperceptible mess.

I had updated the phone’s operating system overnight. And the new OS seemed to have put all the app icons in dark mode.

The white space on each app tile was now a dark gray. And the app icons were now a faded array of colors. This made the apps for Ford, AT&T, Venmo, Garmin and The Weather Channel appear interchangeable.

This was a first world problem of the highest order. But it was still a problem.

Indeed, I felt as lost navigating the screen at 6 AM as I had at 1 AM, when I’d stumbled to the kitchen for a glass of water. I knew the general direction of where I was headed, but getting there required a lot of squinting and some tentative movements.

This had to stop.

I turned to the phone settings screen and tried to revert the darkened icons. But this turned off dark mode entirely — making all the apps on my phone blindingly bright and draining the phone’s battery in the process. I rolled back that change quickly.

I thought about complaining to Apple, who was behind this phone update. Hey, maybe don’t tether dark mode to the app icons, or at least let us opt out of that view.

But I knew better.

This was Apple, after all. The company which once had Think Differently as it’s tagline. The poster child of the closed ecosystem.

Apple wasn’t going to make it easy for me to file a consumer complaint. And even if I persisted, they weren’t likely to take that complaint into account.

The power dynamics were not in my favor.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

Such were the musings of Henry Ford. While it’s uncertain if he said these words verbatim, there’s no doubt that he thought along these lines.

Ford came of age in the first era of capitalism. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations had been published in 1776, and it placed market dynamics front and center.

Without demand, Smith stated, there would be no impetus to create goods. And without those goods to sell, there would be no commerce.

Smith called the combination of these forces The Invisible Hand. And the term soon became ubiquitous.

The United States had also come to be in 1776. And as it established its economy, it deferred heavily to the power of consumer demand.

There was a heavy focus on producing items that the populace had expressed a need for. And on bringing those items to market at a fair price.

It was The Invisible Hand in action.

Innovation had trickled into the fold over the ensuing decades. But such efforts mostly focused on efficiency of production, or the quality of finished materials.

The machines in east coast textile mills helped turn more cotton, silk, or wool into clothing each day. The steel from Andrew Carnegie’s foundries helped build taller buildings and sturdier bridges.

The transportation needs of the people wearing that clothing and crossing those bridges to get from building to building? Those were accounted for by horses, steamships and railroads.

Those were the methods consumers used. As such, those would remain the areas of focus for businesses in the market.

Until Henry Ford turned the whole system on its head.

Ford had a grand vision for the automobile. The motorized wagon had cropped up in Europe, and it had recently found its way to America. Still, it was mostly a novelty for the rich, with no sign of widespread demand.

Ignoring these headwinds, Ford set out to create a reliable vehicle – the Model T. Then he rolled out new production techniques to assemble that vehicle at scale. He offered the vehicle at an appealing price point. All while unleashing messaging sure to spur interest.

Ford’s efforts ushered in the age of the automobile. Horse-drawn travel faded away. Suburbs became viable. The road trip became a thing.

And the second era of capitalism found its spark.

By succeeding with something the market hadn’t asked for, Henry Ford had usurped control.

No longer were consumers pulling the strings. Ford was the one who knew best what was needed. And he ran his company accordingly.

Consumers didn’t always like this, and some did voice their complaints. But as the automobile fast became ubiquitous, those complaints mostly fell on deaf ears.

The power dynamics was not in their favor.

Roughly a century after the Ford Model T hit the market, Steve Jobs took the stage at an Apple keynote. Partway through his presentation, he unveiled the iPhone.

Apple’s first smartphone didn’t come out of left field the way Ford’s automobile had. Consumers had already been using mobile phones for some time. And some of those phone models had email and text messaging capabilities.

But Jobs paid little attention to what consumers had expressed demand for. Instead, he spurred Apple to create something entirely novel.

The result was a pocket-sized supercomputer. One that embedded messaging and phone calls into the touchscreen. And one that allowed for additional functions through programs called phone apps.

Apple didn’t make the iPhone as affordable as Ford had made the Model T. And it took time for consumers to flock to the device.

But once they did, they ended up giving more than their money to the tech behemoth. They handed over leverage as well.

Indeed, the iPhone ended up transforming the way many went about their everyday lives, from accessing entertainment to paying bills to ordering food. Phone apps helped re-imagine these processes.

Many of these apps were built and managed by third parties. But Apple still controlled access to them through a proprietary App Store found on each iPhone.

Third party programs would have to confirm to Apple’s standards to remain in the App Store. Consumer demands carried little weight. What Apple wanted, Apple got.

The same held true for the iPhone’s underlying software. Apple could redesign it at will – by, say, making all app icons appear in dark mode – and then deploy the update to all phone users. The consumer had no say in the matter.

The power dynamics were not in their favor.

A day after the darkened phone icons wrecked my morning, I got a notification.

Check out the guide to your new operating system.

I scrolled through the tutorial, learning how to style text messages and customize my lock screen.

Suddenly, there it was. A tip for customizing my app icons on the phone’s home screen.

I followed the instructions. The process was anything but intuitive, but I got my icons to appear as before.

As I stared at my phone, I felt a mix of emotions.

I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to quint at my phone anymore to open the right app. But I was annoyed that it took a dose of fortune to get back something that never should have been taken from me.

I feel this way all too often in life. And I’m certain that many others do as well.

Our leverage has been taken from us in the name of innovation. And we’re forced to jump through hoops for the privilege of being strong-armed.

It’s a pernicious cycle. But it doesn’t have to be a self-fulfilling one.

We can demand more from those we buy from. We can buoy alternatives to send a message. And we can model behavior that shows more equitable power dynamics between buyer and seller.

None of this will be easy. And some of it might demand some sacrifice.

But it will prove worthwhile.

Power dynamics have gotten out of hand. It’s time to flip the script.

The Immersion Fallacy

The rain was coming down in torrents.

A hurricane had come ashore in South Carolina. And now the entire state was getting drenched. Including the hilly Upstate region.

This development was inconvenient enough. But a big time college football matchup between was set to be played Upstate, featuring the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Clemson Tigers.

Both teams were undefeated going into the matchup. The game was slated for a primetime kickoff slot, with the promise of a national TV audience.

A hurricane was not going to disrupt proceedings.

And so, the pageantry of the weekend went on. Fans rolled into town, and so did ESPN’s College Gameday.

The premier college football preview show set up a stage in the middle of Clemson University’s campus. And despite the rain and wind, the show went on as planned, with hosts bantering from behind a desk.

I was watching at home, and things didn’t look so bad at first. The canopy over the stage and the protective gear over the cameras likely had something to do with that.

But then, I saw the crowd behind the stage. Throngs of college students appeared to be nearly blinded by the windswept rain. And the ground they were standing on had become a boggy mess.

Suddenly, the cameras zoomed in on one student with a particularly youthful face. His shoes were off, and his pants were cuffed below the knee, Tom Sawyer style.

With the eyes of America on him, the student took off his shirt. Then he took a step back and leaped, faceplanting into a pile of mud.

The crowd went wild. But as I watched from my couch, I had a different reaction.

Horror.

Many of us have acute fears. Stimuli that cause us to panic, shut down and lose function.

Mine is mud.

The slippery byproduct of water and dirt repulses me like nothing else. I fear slipping on it, getting it on my clothes, or tracking it into my home or my vehicle.

This aversion is quite on brand for me. I am a neat freak. And nothing is as stubbornly messy as mud.

But the lengths I go to when avoiding this substance are somewhat extreme.

I’ve turned down opportunities to cruise in ATVs before, for fear of getting mud on my clothes. I’ve avoided hiking or running on dirt trails for weeks after a rain event, just to keep my shoes clean. And back when I was playing baseball as a kid, I was too frightened to slide on a wet field.

I realize this behavior is totally irrational. Getting dirty is not the end of the world. And there are plenty of proven ways to clean the mess off.

Yet, I can’t help myself.

I’m not alone in this regard. While I haven’t met anyone who avoids mud the way I do, I know plenty of people who have gone to irrational lengths to avoid their own fears.

But that’s starting to change.

There is an abundance of services out there to reform the spooked. Services that dub themselves immersion therapy.

The premise is straightforward. Immersing someone in the stimuli they fear can reduce their anxiety. It can show the worst outcomes to be unlikely or nonexistent. And the process can break the spell of fear.

And so, many have covered themselves in insects, touched the scaly skin of snakes, or listened to the boom of fireworks. They’ve done all this to face their fears head on.

Perhaps this is what that college student at Clemson University was doing when he bellyflopped into a mud pit on national television.

But I wasn’t about to follow his lead.

I knew better.

What is a fear anyway?

Is it an aversion we’ve picked up through experience? Or something we’re born with?

Many point to the first explanation. They see our origins as blank slates, onto which societal stressors – such xenophobia or bullying – and individualized stressful experiences – such as dog bites or near-drownings – are projected.

This theory posits that fears are accumulated, rather than innate. Which makes it possible to unburden these fears through methods like immersion therapy.

It’s a neat theory. A tidy one. And one that might be too good to be true.

Indeed, I’ve come to believe that the second explanation for fear is more accurate. I assert that fear is part of our DNA from Day One.

There’s plenty of evidence behind this assertion. Infants can curl their bodies in a protective stance long before they can crawl, talk, or understand language. And many physical changes to human genetic code over millennia have helped shield against lethal dangers.

Fear is an element of our survival. One that keeps us from becoming an unwitting snack for a lion or from wandering aimlessly off a cliff’s edge. It’s an inextricable part of us.

Even the most societal-oriented fears can fall under this definition. It’s true that no one is born racist. But the fear of abandonment from the pack is most certainly innate.

Redirecting the source of that existential fear from the pack to the outsider is a predictable shift. Why let the fear become a self-fulfilling prophecy when it can be used to keep our pack’s competitors at bay?

We gain security and acceptance in this process, without experiencing any of the pain of our actions. It’s a no-brainer, on the most primal of levels.

Yes, fear is an inextricable part of us. It always has been. And it always will be.

So, what does this all mean for immersion therapy?

Is it a farce? A sham? A load of nonsense?

Yes and no.

It’s undeniable that immersion therapy has some positive outcomes. Those who are terrified of spiders, or heights, or whatever else can find equilibrium around the same stimuli. They can live life more freely and fully.

These are all good outcomes. Desired outcomes, really.

But these fears have not been cured in the process. Arachnophobes remain arachnophobes, even if they no longer turn ghostly pale in the presence of spiders. Acrophobes are still, at their core, apprehensive of heights.

No, what immersion therapy has actually done is reframed the fear. Instead of reacting to the previously distressing stimuli, the brain has been trained to ignore them. The reaction that the phobic experiences – the one visible to others – it’s gone.

Yet, the fear itself remains in some far corner of the phobic’s brain.

This is not a trivial distinction.

For our society has consistently misrepresented fear. We’ve determined that it’s something that can be rooted out. That must be rooted out.

And so, we’ve waged multifaceted campaigns to create a world where racist, homophobic, and anti-faith impulses cease to exist. We conduct wide-scale immersion therapy to promote a world that is more equal in terms of acceptance and opportunities.

We make progress. We inch closer to the finish line. And then the ugliness rushes right back in.

This whole process is demoralizing for those crusading against the darkness of fear. They can feel like Sisyphus – pushing a boulder up a hill, only to see it tumble back down in the end.

But perhaps a shift in perspective can get them off this hamster wheel of misery.

Perhaps those crusaders can abandon their pursuit of the root cause of fear. And perhaps they can focus on redirecting its manifestations instead.

This means eliminating racist, homophobic, or anti-faith actions – all while acknowledging that the underlying Fear of the Other will remain.

The crusaders can still turn to immersion as their preferred tactic. But they must recognize that their efforts simply constitute a rewiring, not a demolition. The ignition coil can be manipulated, but the engine remains in place.

Such a compromise might be a hard pill to swallow, particularly for those with the purest of ideals. But it’s a necessary one. Particularly if we want to attain the objectives we strive for.

The immersion fallacy is real. We must govern ourselves accordingly.