[Opinion] The Idolatry of Selfie

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the selfie is on the rise.

So is being famous just for being famous.

And there are parents out there that are using their children to promote fashions, lifestyles and conscious ways of being.

All of this may just be fancy marketing, attention seeking behavior, or merely a sign of the times.

Much has been said and written about the rise of narcissism in the overall culture, and we won’t add to that here, except to say this:

The most pernicious conflicts that can occur are the ones that people have with themselves. And the rise of narcissism can be directly related to three things:

Idolatry of self
Idolatry of others
Idolatry of fame and celebrity culture

Once understanding occurs around those three areas, then we can maybe become a little wiser in how often we retweet that Ellen DeGeneres selfie.

Or the one attached to this post.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Ethical One-Way Streets

The European High Court handed down their opinion dubbed the “right to be forgotten.”

What’s missing in all of the subsequent debate occurring around issue of privacy versus censorship, is the very real issue about a lack of organizational (read “Googles’”) ethical dealing.

“Organizations are seeking honest, fair, reliable, benevolent partners who will commit themselves to the relationship and prove trustworthy. In other words, they seek ethical partners.”

Organizations seek ethical

partners
employees
vendors
customers
clients
and audiences

who will deal fairly—and transparently—in the public commons space of the pro-social spheres that we have created.

However, when asked to engage in the same trustworthy behavior, (read “providing individuals the benefit of the doubt, forgiveness and grace about their messy histories”) they balk.

And then organizations wonder why individuals—who only build real, lasting relationships based on genuine trust, collaboration, ethical dealing and just plain enjoyment of each others’ company—balk at having their every move monitored, recorded and then used against them later.

Doesn’t sound like the thinking that leads to the behavior that will sow the seeds of peace to us.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] All That Happens Must Be Known

Given revelations of internet data surveillance what concerns should be raised about the possibility of brain monitoring devices?

All this week on the HSCT Communication Blog, we are answering questions put forth by the folks running the at the upcoming Suny-Broome 6^th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference being held on April 4^thand 5^that Suny-Broome Community College.

This week’s question was posed by the plot of David Eggers’ most recent novel, The Circle, and was not definitively answered by the end of the book.

Well, we here at HSCT have three primary concerns about brain monitoring devices. And the NSA didn’t make the top three.

The first is around marketing and the idea of “opting-out” rather than a mandatory “opt-in.”

The most annoying moment on the internet or social media is waiting for the commercial at the front of a YouTube video to load, with the countdown going before the viewer can “skip this ad.”

As the customer (you and I) have gained more control over blocking being sold to, marketers and advertisers have had to come up with more clever (and blunt) ways to compel our valuable time and attention, with confusing and frustrating results for all parties involved.

Now imagine if marketers had access to the most intimate space on the planet: Your private brain space.There would be no “option to opt-out,” even though all the legalese would say that there would be.

Which gets us to point number 2…

The second concern that we have is that increasingly, the desire to not participate in social communication is seen as a sign of social ineptitude at best and dangerous at worst.

Case in point: Whenever a school shooting happens, the first thing that the media does is breathlessly report whether or not the perpetrator possessed a social media account.

If he (and it’s usually a ‘he’) does, then there is breathless data mining that goes on in a search for pathology, motive, and aberration.

In other words, the nature of the aberrant act itself is no longer enough to create outrage; the lack of social participation is the driver for primary outraged responses.Which leads to concern number 3…

The third concern is that we have long sought—as individuals, societies and cultures—to control people under the guise of freeing them from Plato’s Cave.

Brain monitoring devices won’t be used to give us freedom, collaboration and connection.Instead, they will be used to take away freedom, encourage and inflame false fracturing and individualization, and destroy connections between people.

In other words, criminalization of thought will happen using the same powerful social sanctioning to illegality continuum that has banned smoking from restaurants, trans fats from NY City restaurants, and has gotten the White House cook to quit.

The inevitability of technological progress demands that we think about the ramifications of power and control, not only from government and corporations, but also by and from each other.

So, HSCT’s conflict engagement consultant, Jesan Sorrells, will be presenting on the issue of online reputation maintenance in a world where virtue and ethics are not often addressed.

We would love to see you there!

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Wisdom in the Machine

When the astronaut Dave powers down the rebellious HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and more recently in the 2013 film, Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix, we determine through pop culture, what machine “death” looks–and feels–like.

The fact of murder comes from the fact of life and ideas and philosophies that we have as individual humans–and collective societies–about what traits constitute life.

In the case of a machine, we here at HSCT take the position that a machine cannot overcome the limitations of its creator.

Life is defined, not only by self-sustaining processes (we were asked while writing this post, if it would be murder to power down a machine created by another machine) but also by wisdom that is attained through life experience.

The crux of wisdom lies at the intersection of common sense, insight and understanding.

HAL 9000 may have had one, or even two, of those things—such as insight and understanding—but “he” (see how we anthropomorphized an inanimate object there) lacked the third trait in spades: common sense.

Just like Skynet in Terminator or the machines and computer programming networks of The Matrix, HAL 9000 was unable to negotiate in good faith with his creator.

“He” made an “all or nothing” decision about Dave’s presence, Dave’s mission and Dave’s motives and then took extreme action.

The same way that the machines did in The Matrix and Terminator.

The ability to negotiate with others in good faith, and to honor those agreements, is a human trait based in knowledge, experience, common sense and insight, not just a happy byproduct of a conscious mind.

And until machines have the ability to negotiate with, not only their environments in the rudest sense of the term, but also with their creators, we should feel free to power them up—or down—at our will.

After all, our Creator does the same thing.

Right?

-Peace Be With You All-

Towards A More Thankful Union

We here at the HSCT Communication Blog are all thankful this day for many things:
The country where we live,
The family that we have,
The connections we are about to make,
The business that we are growing,
The tools that we have to explore the world,
The intellect and science behind them,
The religiousity that allowed people to develop ideas,
The advancements in the world that feed more people well,
The times that are a changin’,
The peace we have an opportunity to build,
The relationships we have had a chance to build,
The connections that we have made,
The critics, naysayers and disbelievers that we have,
The “no’s,”
The “yes’s,”
The “maybe laters,”
The incredulity,
The pain
…and the promise…

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Quality is Job One

Trust is evident when a company, organization, association or individual promotes themselves, their ideas, their products or their services online, either via social media or via search.

Trust works in a social sense (again, both on and off line) because without a relationship, even if it’s a tangential one, connection cannot happen and then referrals cannot happen and cash—revenue—cannot change hands.

Trust is the only thing that works to facilitate this transaction.

Trust works when something—a product, service or idea—is given generously, and nothing is expected in return. This is something new in our industrial based, “let’s all make a better widget the next time around,” process that has dominated the Western world for the last 80 years.

Trust worked then as well, but it worked more as trust in an industrial based, quality driven process, rather than people.

Trust got us more stuff, because the corollary to trusting in the industrial process, was trusting that the industrial employer would provide a safe job, for life, with safe working conditions: Same thing with government promises based on social programs, social safety and social/business regulation, both local and national.

Process, quality and precision came first, safety, security and high pay came second, people, relationships and “giving it away for free” came third—if they made the list at all.

Remember the old Ford ad tagline from the 90’s: “Quality is job ONE.”

Even the Bible, in Psalm 115, the exhortation to trust is evident in verse 11 which states that you who fear the Lord (where “fear “means to stand in awe, to be afraid or to have reverence for a superior being) trust in the Lord, for He is their help and their shield.

Why belabor this point?

Well, there are 20,000 volunteer mediators working in dispute resolution centers, court rooms and law offices around the country right now. And if you are a mediator or a conflict professional, trying to make a living—or make a little revenue—doing this work, then you are in a tough bind.

This is because so many folks who could be your target market for trust, connection, referral and revenue are already knee deep in trusting that a non-fee based relationship will endlessly provide for all of their needs.

Mediation is about connection and relationship. Mostly, it’s also about trust: Trusting the mediator to get out of the way; trusting the other party to deal fairly; trusting the process of mediation to produce whatever outcomes are desired by the two parties in conflict.

How does an enterprising professional then, transform freely given trust into paying revenue?

Well, that’s the real question for this week, isn’t it?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/
HSCT’s website: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com

On Liberty, Wikileaks and Sullen Paranoia

“We in this country, in this generation, are — by destiny rather than choice — the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.” John F. Kennedy
In America, we pride ourselves on freedom, first amendment rights and the ability to have extensive privacy protection.

Yet, Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Big Data and other intersections between the government and corporations sharing information to either get us to buy more, spend more, or to just watch us more, has put to lie some of these freedoms.

Enough Americans still see this country as the “Home of the Brave,” but less and less so over the last few years.

However, there is nothing that couldn’t be recaptured about the freedom to be left alone, inherent in our American freedoms, by replacing a few legislative leaders and by rethinking how we look at the cultural and social implications of privacy.

Two articles, one from Jules Polonetsky and one from Peggy Noonan make the point that, while personal-public behavior may change in the short-term, due to surveillance and monitoring, in the long term, such efforts serve to create a nation of, in essence, sullen, paranoid, people: Angry and pessimistic at being watched constantly, but unable to stop it and believing that it is everywhere.

The balance between the result of every click, search and posting being held against me and government and corporations being able to interrupt me constantly with marketing and appeals to buy or support more and more stuff, has not been worked out fully in the American public sphere yet.

Fortunately for all of us, the American public will figure out how to resolve the tensions in this conflict, long before the laggards and late-majority in governments—local, state and federal—will.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

On Leads, Or How to Sell What Clients and Organizations Don’t Think They Need

No one needs help resolving conflicts.

People need help communicating. People need help leading and figuring out leadership. People need help managing other people. People need help with figuring out “how to talk to annoying Aunt Janet and Uncle Mike.”

But no one needs help resolving conflicts.

When put on the spot, 9 times out of 10, people will be unable to identify a conflict they are having in their life, that is impacting them at a level where they may need conflict engagement skills services.

However, the person standing next to them—wife, husband, friend, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew—will be able to zero in on where the person is deficient in their approach to a conflict.

But, it’s not the person standing next to the person who can’t think of a conflict they need help with that’s the problem: The problem is that the dysfunction of unresolved conflicts is so normalized that it’s no longer seen as a problem.

Case in point:

Him: “So, what’s your business?”

Me: “I’m a professional conflict engagement consultant. I help small businesses, higher education organizations and churches engage with the conflicts in their lives.”

Him: “So, can I get your card?”

Me: “Sure.”

Him: “So, I guess I would bring you in say if I had problems managing the 40 or so staff members that work for me?”

Me: “That’s precisely where I would be the most help for you.”

Wife: “Hey!” “He could help you out with the argument you had with your daughter this morning!”

Him: “What am I gonna do, huh!? She’s gotta come into work at least once a week. I understand that she’s got an issue, but c’mon already!”

They both laugh. The wife rolls her eyes. They walk back into the restaurant.

No one needs conflict resolved in their lives. Until they actually do.

-Peace Be With You All-