Be Careful What You Wish For (#BCWYWF)
Conflicting virtues, virtues turning into nihilism.
I. Some Auxiliary Information
I will explain what I mean by Signal Science in a later post. Today, I merely want to share some thoughts on something that has always been very important to me. You could call it Integrity, Professionalism, having high standards, have strong personal values, a strong personal ethical code, and so forth.
Ethics is not just something I stumbled upon accidentally, as though it were an afterthought. It is something that I studied formally for many years, a course of study which I felt compelled to follow due to one of the very worst of my inherent flaws of character: The desire to please others, the innate fear of disturbing or offending others, etc.
I dreamt of World Peace, I got a War on Terror.
What began as an external source of motivation, i.e. pleasing others, over time it became much more profound, greater in scope, and much more embedded in every facet of my being. I ended up deciding on a set of fundamental principles that would guide all future actions on my part, an ideal I would endlessly work towards.
Unfortunately, I’m much more of a sinner than a saint. The point I want to make, though, is not about values or virtues in the particular, but about a set of values, preferences, interests and so forth, and the impossibility of total congruence, coherence between them.
That is to say, principles can be simple but life is always complex. There are always trade-offs. One can hardly avoid that fact, and the sooner one accepts it or learns to cope with it, the better it is not only for yourself but for everyone else.
We as individuals do not exist in vacuums. What I mean by this is that my decisions, every last one of them, not only have an impact or effect on others, on their lives, their being, and so forth, but also on the decisions they make, as well as on their powers of decision-making, i.e. their power-to-act. Ethics is about the power-to-act (Spinoza).
II. Who am I?
I have been an artist my whole life working across many mediums. I am a professional painter, sound designer, and a prolific writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. I’ve also been an independent scholar, doing research across various fields. I happen to be a virtuoso of the piano and guitar, and have created a vast corpus of musical works, ranging from songs to piano pieces to full-blown orchestral works. I’ve played in bands, you get the picture. Interdisciplinary, polymath, etc.
If one wants to talk about standards, then I think I know a few things about the subject. The problem is this => I never really collaborated with anyone, for the first 20 years, let’s say (at least not formally). When I did collaborate, it was with other artists I was very close to. Often-times, it was with family.
When I say collaboration, I do not mean cooperation. As a musical performer, I had to cooperate with all sorts of people and institutions, had to learn to deal with constraints in that and in my everyday artistic practise. By collaboration, I mean working with others on the same project, artistic projects in this case, where there are 2 or more artists co-creating, with direct impact on the end-result.
I never liked collaboration and co-creation, and though I have been doing it now for many years, I still don’t like it and probably never will.
III. Who cares?
More recently, though, I came to an unfortunate conclusion. All those principles and standards I was talking about, they can’t always co-exist in perfect congruence with the values, principles, etc., of your collaborators. One learns to engage in open dialogue, one becomes an active listener, and so forth. One learns to make concessions and trade-offs, and one often has to make some very tough decisions, tough calls.
Understood. I would never go against my own personal ethical code, but there is something fundamentally paradoxical in this. Too many virtues and you end up entirely paralyzed, doing essentially nothing.
Too much Yang, not enough. You can’t work with so-and-so because they eat meat and you are a vegetarian. You can’t take such-and-such a job because the CEO hates dogs. The end-result is you can’t do anything, you can’t work with anyone, collaborate on any projects, you are effectively narrowing your own power-to-act.
This is the danger. Your virtues turn into nihilism.
IV. Wait, who cares about integrity?
Here is the catch, and the reason I’m writing this article. As a prolific artistic creator, I have a stake in the intellectual property game. I have a vast corpus of works in my catalogue, in my possession, and I can’t just give it away for free. It’s what puts food on the table. I have to sell art objects to make a living. I can’t give them away for free, I have to extract value from my creations.
Otherwise, I may as well go work at McDonald’s, no offence to the institution. It would mean a regular pay, job security at least in some measure, and so forth.
Those pesky principles again, forcing me out of hearth and home.
So I made some difficult choices. I made some concessions, trade-offs, I joined a few teams in the last few years, help build some amazing products, did some brilliant research. Oh, and I signed some NDAs too. In fact, I am a one-way Strongbox. Anything you share with me comes in one ear and never leaves the Strongbox of my spirit, my mind, my body, my heart and soul. I wanted to be a pastor once, or chaplain, and studied theology for many years, with a great interest in the work that goes into becoming one who takes confessions, and all the profound implications of such a vocation, which is really a calling.
I never got the call, but I decided long ago to stick to principles of strict confidentiality. When in doubt, keep it confidential. Keep it confidential even if you are asked not to. Beg me to spill the secrets, you are only wasting your breath. Scream at me and the Strongbox only gets locked more tightly.
I really had no say in the matter. Being an artist, I couldn’t always be truthful about what I was doing, working on, etc. I didn’t lie about it, I just never told anyone the whole story. This made collaboration difficult, in fact it made interpersonal communication with other humans a hardship which I must face every day. No arbitrary truthful reporting unless mandated to do so.
It’s is a high-stakes game, remember?
V. Unscientific Concluding Postscript
Here is the moral of the story. Keep other people’s secrets long enough, uphold it with your very life if you have to, prepared to sacrifice everything to maintain secrecy, anonymity, confidentiality, and so forth, the dignity of confessions, and what you get is that nihilistic force I mentioned earlier => you risk diminishing your power-to-act.
I wish I could just take one team and introduce its members to another team, and we could all be the happier for it, and collaborate on a joint effort, project together. This is neither realistic or feasible in most cases, at least for me currently.
One project is in stealth mode, another has an NDA, another is just an individual with no expectations of confidentiality or secrecy, but I feel compelled to preserve that dignity, whether they recognize its necessity or are even ignorant of its existence or careless about it.
And that’s one of the most persistent problems in the world, at least from my perspective as an individual with a massive artistic corpus, a vast network of brilliant ideas I’ve developed independently of everything under the sun, but my own investments in efforts, time, energy, and so forth.
The guiding light for me in this ethical war is to remain incorruptible at all costs, if I can help it.
This means having boxes, partitions, which do not communicate with one another (a.k.a. Spiritual Strongbox). I know that Team X is doing x,y,z, and Team B is doing a,b,c, and both could profit from knowing of each other’s existence, and collaboration between the Teams could even be lucrative for both parties. I just don’t think it’s my job to connect the two together. No one asked me to introduce them to other teams. I wasn’t formally given the mandate to do anything of the sort. I therefore refuse to do it unless asked explicitly. I’m an artist, remember, professional painting is more than connect-the-dots.
You see, two parties that are not aware of each other’s existence, cannot ask me to introduce one to the other, or vice versa. It is like a Secret Archive with Secret Index, Secret Catalogue no one knows of. There is no lookup table. I may also be forced by the power of the law of the land to NOT speak of them to anyone in the world, in the most absolute terms imaginable.
VI. Scientific Addendum to The Unscientific Concluding Postscript
The point is there is another side to the whistle blower phenomenon. Traditionally, a whistle blower blows a whistle. In our conception, however, the whistle is an alarum bell: He/she/it is giving a warning signal, is sharing inside knowledge, first-hand knowledge, experience, presumably to warn others of some corrupt activity, what have you.
It’s simple Signal Science, Watson. STOP SCREAMING, I said I would get to that later! ;-)
The reverse is a whistle blower blowing a different kind of whistle: I could be blowing a whistle which signals a great opportunity for someone. In this sense, insider trading precisely has to do with such whistles. If I blow the whistle on an instance of insider trading that came to my attention, then I am a whistle blower in the traditional sense. But those doing the inside trade are blowing whistles too, just of a different kind.
One man’s whistle is another man’s… whistle? No touchy my whistle!
I refuse to blow any whistle. I am very discreet about what signals I send into the world, and extremely vigilant about signals in general. I emit signals, in fact every decision I make emits a signal, every behavior I engage in blows a whistle of some kind. I receive signals too, though, and I can choose to listen or not listen to any given signal.
As a matter of principle, I never paid any attention to the contents of WikiLeaks. I have no interest whatsoever of knowing the contents of diplomatic cables. That information was shared under the expectation of secrecy and confidentiality of the most solemn sort. I don’t care what diplomats are talking about. They could be talking about acts of great and evil and matters of grave indignity for all I care. It’s just none of my business. None of my bee’s wax.
Neither is someone’s wonderful, brilliant world-changing idea any of my bee’s wax. I don’t care what you think and do, unless it risks having a negative impact on my life, on my proverbial power-to-act. That’s the ethical conundrum, the Catch-22. If I cared about all the wonderful, life-changing, earth-shattering projects in the world, the truly humble, humanitarian, etc. projects that risk altering the very course of civilization itself, bringing us all into a much, much better place, improving the conditions of all peoples on earth inclusively…
Sorry, what were you saying? I wasn’t paying attention.
It’s not because I have no empathy, or don’t care about what’s at stake. It is that I recognize that if I decide I want to become a mediator in that sort of game, someone bringing people together, someone sharing contacts, a super-connector, a pivotal, central node in the network, a hub in the network, and so forth, then that’s what I will in fact become: a connector, a hub, a mediator. But that’s just not what I am deep down. Fundamentally it is not in my nature to mediate, in fact it’s quite the opposite.
Unfortunately, though, I have been forced to intervene, to mediate, to my great dismay. I have become an expert in the sacred art out of necessity. But no one wants a mediator intervening in their shit. It’s usually always someone you call in as a last resort.
So why are so many people trying to play the role of mediator, when they haven’t been formally trained in the craft, and no one has given them this mandate?
VII. Be Careful What You Wish For (#BCWYWF)
It risks biting you in the ass. I can’t tell you what Team X is working on, even if it is open source, public domain, public knowledge, is currently not under any appreciable expectation of privacy, secrecy, confidentiality, even if Team X formally asks me to promote their stuff, to tell everyone in the world about what they are doing. I feel no compulsion to do so. I am not your or anyone else’s evangelist, unless I signed a contract stipulating that I am an evangelist for such a cause.
Be careful of evangelizing for too many causes. This too risks biting you in the ass. Two causes can both be virtuous, good causes, great ideas, open source, no expectation of privacy, secrecy, confidentiality, can be public knowledge, in the public domain, it can even be talked about on the radio all the livelong day. It might be a great project everybody deserves to know about. I’m just not the guy to spread arbitrary messages aimlessly, worthy or not. I’m not a reporter or news anchor. I have not been mandated to spread information of any kind.
You may realize someday that one of the most important factors in the proper flow of information is precisely the constraints to the flow of information. Stop-gaps are necessary. Limits on expression are necessary, limits on the spread of information are necessary, at least information in a general sense, of arbitrary nature.
It is the anti-signal. You are blowing a virtuous whistle, sending good wholesome signals about good causes. Yet too many signals, as great as they might be, create noise. The channels are currently saturated to capacity. Sit down and shut up, at least some of the time. Silence is a virtue. Too many good signals = the good signal becomes anti-signal. It is not noise, because it is virtuous, honest and truthful in its reporting. Noise is not only inevitable, it is necessary. Take out all the noise, all you have is signal, and the signal becomes anti-signal. The anti-signal will diminish your power-to-act. Virtue turns into nihilism.
THE END
