Organizations are like vehicles, careening through familiar terrain, and growing by exploring unknown areas. Driving any vehicle on a steady path forward, especially through changing roads and weather, requires constant checks and course corrections. In today's tumultuous climate of constant change, visual checks from the driver may not be sufficient. What mirrors do you have set up to give you external feedback outside your line of sight? Maybe your mirrors take the form of social media KPIs or community engagement. How do you measure whether those mirrors are adjusted to give you the information you need to safely steer your vehicle? Activated cognitive biases skew our vision. As mapped in this codex, there are generally four categories of cognitive bias: when we are presented with too much information, need to act fast, are not sure about what carries meaning, and when deciding what information to remember. How many times a day does one (if not all) of these happen? It can be easy to get tunnel vision. Because blind spots are made by these biases, they often require an assist to navigate. Are you forgetting to ask for help from people inside the car? Was one of your mirrors bumped without you noticing? Maybe this resonates but you're not sure where to start because your organization seems to be working well.
As important as it is to be connected as a team, sometimes familiar connections reinforce bias, at times leading to problems such as groupthink. When a team is more concerned with maintaining the appearance of cooperation and harmony than on the reality of what's happening inside or outside the vehicle, a new kind of blind spot emerges. The pandemic has changed how we communicate. Remote meetings require greater awareness of individual realities. Electrical technology may have partially transformed us into robots for now, but our human needs still exist, off-camera. When you sense discord but can't place it, trust that intuition. Consider asking for an assist. At Collaborative Resolutions, our team's strength lies in our opposing perspectives which we integrate into understanding to give you a reflection from the outside in. We tend to glorify teamwork as the sure way to achieve productivity. Accompanying images show a group of smiling faces or fist bumps, visually encouraging the illusion that effective team members agree with and get along with one another. Dissent is a necessary part of group growth, yet in the age of polarity, people are less likely to speak their minds and more likely to have an emotional reaction to someone else's view.
Articles, studies, and opinions circulate on the the best practices for teamwork, distilling the findings and orienting them to the leader. One such citation-heavy article establishes the logical foundation for the benefits high-performing teams and goes onto share four important considerations for leaders and managers: 1) Foster a teamwork culture: make teamwork the norm, be a consensus leader, be positive. 2) Understand what a team is and isn't (versus a work group) 3) Understand the 'life cycle' of a team: forming, conforming, storming, norming, reforming, performing, mourning. 4) Know your role as a leader Best Practice Consulting, like many others, reframes the concept of collaborative teamwork as a top-down endeavor requiring one individual take action to define vision, create blueprints to execute goals, build trust, get the 'right' people involved, emphasize pride, establish urgency and relevance, promote self-awareness, encourage sharing knowledge and information openly, empower the team to take ownership of their work, motivate self-management, give rewards and recognition, and initiate rituals and ceremonies to promote bonding. True leadership happens as a function of consensus not of gatekeeping. I contend, using common sense and reason instead of logic and scientific studies, that a strong team is one where each member has the opportunity to try out different roles so everyone becomes aware of one another's strengths and weaknesses. Each person sees themselves as equal with every other person, listening more than they speak to make space for the whole. An individual whose identity is entwined with their perception of themselves as a leader is more likely to tell the group how to behave and respond to dissent as though it is a threat. Positional authority undermines the resilience of a self-governing group. This is as true in a work setting or any other. We are whole people who have learned to break ourselves into pieces to fit the categories of existence we inherited. Denying our wholeness is a habit we can break. I believe if humans can dream space travel into being, we can dream collaborative coexistence into being as well. When I was a child I dreamed of peace, in my home, in the world, and in my heart. Now I am grown and own myself, I recognize peace necessitates the presence of war. Collaborative existence is my new dream, one I plan to continue practicing without compromise because I believe there is always a win-win-win when power replaces force in interpersonal dynamics. I am a parent. Sometimes my child deeply annoys me. This is a common dynamic between adults and children. I’m not talking about misbehavior. I have taught my child to take responsibility for their conduct, that manipulation is an ineffective and unsatisfying way of getting what they desire. My child behaves well on the terms of their own conscience. Their sense of self-responsibility is so developed, sometimes I am on the receiving end of reminders about the importance of moderation and proper hydration. So when I get annoyed with my child’s questions, murmuring, tongue clacking, mouth popping, beatboxing, their wiggling, tapping, and fidgeting--- not to mention the unavoidable spills, messes, damages, and accidents that accompany learning, I must put my teachings into practice and check my desire to manipulate using my authority. This is how I exercise intergenerational reciprocity. Yes, I could use my parental authority to silence their expressions by categorizing their noises and movements as undesirable. And sometimes I want to! In these moments, my frustration wants to convince me it’s reasonable to use my parental authority to manipulate, especially if I’m tired, hungry, thirsty, or stressed. It was easier to slow this reflex when my child was younger, cuter, more innocent. Yet the more years my kid lives, the more likely it is, I will make the limiting assumption that the purpose of their noises and movement, is to annoy me, to test me, even to challenge my authority. Sound familiar? The older my child becomes, the more often I am confronted with patterns of control I've experienced, and I find myself challenged to release, heal, grow, branch out and try something different. I know if I used my authority to silence my child in a moment of frustration, I would be teaching my child to reject their differences and to silence themselves to conform to my desires. Or to see me as untrustworthy. Using my authority this way would be a deep disservice to both of us, limiting the depth of our connection and the sense of safety and security available to my child. I believe it unethical for me to tie my personal satisfaction to my child’s sense of acceptance and confidence.
When I choose to accept the ways my child’s expression comes freely, I must turn my attention inward to my frustrations. I recognize which of my own needs are unmet and meet them, and in doing so often discover common ground. Once I am content in meeting my needs by filling my own cup first, being present comes easier and I find I have the bandwidth to transform what was annoying me into a bridge of connection. Say, an impromptu table-drum duet or turning clean-up into a cooperative game. Finding emotional stability within myself prevents me from using my authority to control in a limiting way, leaning into self-acceptance, which allows me to accept what I cannot control-- everything outside me. This is a challenge available to any parent, teacher, manager, or leader. The cardinal concern of leadership is self-responsibility and acceptance of what is, for the relationship with oneself is the lens that influences all perceptions, deductions, and decisions. Many child-rearing suggestions emphasize structure and stability as key to a child’s healthy growth. Well-meaning parents, anxious to do right by their kids can be misled by this advice, imposing an expert’s recommended structure onto their children without learning about that child’s unique needs. What does structure mean to an infant? Sleeping alone for 'safety'? Abiding by a sleep schedule where babies are left to cry themselves to sleep in a dark room during certain hours? These might make sense to an adult’s linear logic. To an infant or toddler, being deprived of their caretaker’s presence could result in unhealthy attachment issues that affect them for the rest of their lives. Social science suggests that children’s methods of communication are usually a result of what is modeled and reinforced. A child who tries to communicate and is not heard comes to expect to be misunderstood, and their self-confidence may be impacted. A child who lacks confidence in themselves, their perspective, and their ability to communicate is more likely to conform to what is happening around them as a form of self-preservation. Such children buy into narratives about themselves written by other people, limiting the depth of their self-awareness to the way others see them. They are taught to digest information by synthesizing others’ ideas, rather than integrating it with their own ideas, preserving a simplistic view. Oversimplifying complexity through systemic processes or conditioned conformity may create the illusion of organization, but the categories will be siloed rather than function as an integrated network. Children are currently taught knowledge structures that emphasize silo-supporting skills to better serve their future employers as wage-earners. Reading, math, writing, and computer literacy ensure a common knowledge base that privileges rational, systemic methods of thinking, rewarding specialization. Yet the skills needed to lead a successful life are found in conflict resolution principles, an underutilized area of learning I was lucky to stumble upon which has greatly impacted my life and given me tools to navigate integrating the complexity of reality within my simplified silos. Conflict resolution and peacebuilding include mindfulness, consensus building, transformational justice, de-escalation, perspective taking, improvisation, and nonviolent communication. An education absent of these important skills results in an individual who doesn’t understand conflict, and so often fears it, finding ways to avoid it, when avoiding conflict is one of the ways it’s amplified! When a social structure relies on systemic reasoning to rationalize its processes starting from birth, the depth and complexity of its human participants have no place to connect. In this way, conflict can be seen as a form of abundance, communicating opportunities for growth that can recognize where connection has failed. Simplified knowledge structures, propped up by dominant narratives and conformity culture, make human complexity invisible to manage it. This practice is one we are collectively complacent in supporting, supporting children to have their needs met and their voices heard on their terms is one way to disrupt that complicity.
The way crime is defined says a lot about society. Widening the lens on crime is necessary to understand the whole picture. Many crimes happen because people are living at or below survival, often living in their trauma, unable to function within the rules of civilized society so they are othered and rejected. Who is to punish? The people who commit crimes: reliving their nightmares, compromising their integrity, just so they can get their basic needs met? This may check out rationally, however common sense objects.
According to self-determination theory, humans need three basic things to be content: to feel competent, to feel authentic, and to feel connected, applicable once fundamental physical needs of survival are met. The conditions that prioritize profit over people privilege some humans access to self-determination over others who fight just to exist on margins of physical needs. Those who enjoy such privilege often share the system’s values of weighing extrinsic traits such as money and status over intrinsic traits mentioned above, and as a result, are never content. To those who value material gains, no amount of money or status is sufficient, so wealth is hoarded and power misused by people who are seen as leaders. “The alienating effects of wealth and modernity on the human experience start virtually at birth and never let up (Junger, 2016, p. 23).” Wealth and modernity march forward at the will and command of those who enjoy its benefits, with zero actionable alternative for those who suffer for it. This is the crime in need of punishment. Billionaires hoarding wealth are held in esteem for their faux altruism and powerful ‘work ethic’ (Rampton, 2017) while the extracted capital they control prevents others from accessing basic needs. Removed from the civilized notions of wealth and development as desirable, taking grossly more than one needs at the expense of others can be framed as a crime against collective humanity. Consider a personable child whose natural instinct to connect reflects their intelligence and charisma. According to the context of public school’s culture of conformity, such personable instincts are a threat to the order of the classroom. A child successfully pursuing their need to self-determine is punished as a disruption to maintaining order in the school context, analogous to crime in societal context. In this way, punitive justice often causes more harm than good, punishing specific actions without recognizing the context they occur within. Natural consequences are replaced by systemic consequences, conditioning people who live in the system to feel the way they naturally are is problematic. Difference and dissent are important aspects of healthy group function, yet cannot exist where coercive normalization is practiced. Restorative justice, based on Navajo justice concepts, seeks to repair the harm done by crime, replacing force and coercion with group solidarity, guilt with healing, helping the individual reconcile with all aspects of reality, particularly with themselves (Yazzie, 1994). Transformative justice is restorative justice paired with social justice. It recognizes the injustice of the legal, political, and economic systems as bearing on ‘inferior’ groups with layers of violence. Violence (and that of it labeled as crime) does not happen in a vacuum. The adaptive response to being cornered and threatened is to attack, yet people who fight for their existence in this manner are vilified by conformists. I see the framing of alleged criminals as victims as a signal that change is happening, accurately applied when the “criminal” is a victim of the system, particularly with black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) identity intersections. I believe any profession that bestows its practitioners with power over non-practitioners is a corrupt setup to start, particularly one requiring very little training, as with American law enforcement. When the surface is scratched, law enforcement’s reliance on othering in training bias comes into view. Getting to the root of crime involves, as Dutta suggests, amplifying subaltern voices to bring greater awareness and understanding to the practice of othering which allows some to be desired while others are derisive (2011). Poverty is not a crime, yet it has been criminalized. I believe if people had access to having their needs met on their terms, most crime would stop. The most unacceptable crimes are those society turns a blind eye to and media outlets venerate. Ultimately the police protect property, not people, and so can be seen as agents of state and industry, reinforcing the valuation of profit over people. If you are a person, this should concern you, no matter how much power or wealth you have as you read this. References Dutta, M. J. (2011). Communicating social change: Structure, culture, agency. New York, NY: Routledge. Junger, S. (2016). Tribe: On homecoming and belonging. Hachette Book Group. Rampton, J. (2017, April 25). 8 ways billionaires are different than everyone else. Inc. https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/who-wants-to-be-a-billionaire-8-ways-billionaires-are-different-than-us.html Yazzie, R. (1994). Life comes from it: Navajo justice concepts. New Mexico Law Review, 24(2), p. 175-190. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2017&context=nmlr The primary issue facing managers of people, adults and children, today is creating meaningful change within a capitalistic system which constantly reinforces and renews its self-interest at the expense of others. This issue encapsulates burnout, work versus real life, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. We have come up with these words for individual problems yet seem to miss the overarching pattern, seeing (virtual) trees and missing the (chopped down) forest they exist within.
The innate desire to improve oneself through growth, as an individual, community, or collective is replaced over time by a complacent acceptance of the status quo, focused on surviving by conforming. Individually, this looks like people who follow leadership without questioning and leaders who attain some level of status and stop working on themselves (Hill & Lineback, 2011). This dynamic is related to the way the capitalistic system organizes business and government systems within it to adapt narratives so critiques are rationalized rather than taking action to change practices. Worshiping linear logic means there’s always a reason for something, and sufficient reason supports the logic dominating a toxic social hierarchy. What authority asserts or agrees with has little space for dissent. This feeds an illusion that The Authority is Right. Exceptional leaders can sort through the ways mediocrity is reinforced by short-term pursuits for artificial gains, however they tend to be rare. To avoid getting mired in such ‘marginal costs,’ a manager’s ethos must be informed by a strong sense of purpose and a metric of personal responsibility (Christiansen, 2010). Replacing reason based on hierarchical support with reason based on long-term, intergenerational health outcomes aligns reason with common sense. This matter is interesting to me because I have experienced first-hand, how this system reinforces itself in every aspect of existence to prevent people from identifying and moving toward their purpose. Starting at a young age I was, like many, silenced and taught to conform. As a result of hierarchicalizing the importance of knowledge above the labor required to sustain that knowledge, reason has replaced common sense in business practices. By focusing on an authority’s priorities or standards, what appears to be growth to an optimistic perspective can be unconscious performative pandering. True progress cannot be constructed through narrative alone. Self-knowledge, informed by balancing self-awareness with self-responsibility and self-accountability, guides individuals towards their unique truth, their purpose. Yet, many individuals silence their internal wisdom in favor of the short-term gratification of acceptance that comes through conformity, a dynamic often learned in childhood to feel connection. One of the main ways managers can promote an environment that allows people to reconnect with themselves is to be realistic when committing to goals, recognizing and reinforcing healthy boundaries. Pushing people to prioritize work above their physical, mental, and/or emotional health by assigning unrealistic targets and timelines seems like progress to a perspective that demands profit above all else. The most profitable aspects of the market are new areas of growth which serve the spirit of capitalism. As shared by Max Weber, “capitalism is identical with the pursuit of [profit] and forever renewed by profit by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise (Duska, 2004, p. 24).” The current industry of pursuit, continually renewed and rational, is that of electronic technology in engineering physical capacity and virtual possibility. I’d like to ask you, reader, to consider: what is the goal of developing electronic technology as fast as possible? By making processing speeds, memory bandwidths, and software offerings greater and more expansive, what is being achieved? Reason says faster is better. Common sense asks what the purpose of being fast is. I contend a pause is needed to assess and effectively integrate the technology already developed. Blindly using capital to develop more knowledge to adapt to instead of attending problematic issues is not very intelligent. Valuing reason above common sense amplifies issues such as the growing wealth gap, climate change, inhumane policy, historic injustice, and police brutality. The growing prison/military industrial complex is a testament to the intersection of these issues. Constantly changing technology is driven by our human need to connect and communicate. Changes are framed as updates, yet this one way current power brokers maintain a self-serving system rooted in their singular pursuit of self-interest. Collaboration requires getting on the same page. Continual developments in electronic technology actually serve as perpetual obstacles to getting and remaining connected. Humanity would be better served developing relationship technology which results in emotional connections that can influence success as much and likely more than electrical connections. This path is worth exploration. So why aren’t technology leaders, revered for their vision, advocating for a common-sense approach? Who are we placing our trust in as leaders of our collective trajectory? Are their beliefs about what is needed to succeed informed by a healthy relationship with themselves and those around them? If not, why are they leaders? Have we not learned the superficial progress of pursuing profit cannot sustain authentic growth? For all the knowledge we have accumulated through dedicated research, we as humans seem unable to apply takeaways through critical thinking. Imagine ending centuries-long practices which serve so few at the expense of so many. I believe we can. By learning how managers currently operate using reason to address challenges, issues, and opportunities, I can recognize openings for true growth through common sense intentional change. I do not wish to find my place reproducing the existing system. I intend on disrupting the complacency comfort has afforded the brokers of power. I will continually pursue learning opportunities and share my insights, empowering the people to set a hard boundary on the ways they must mine their personal resources in service of business to survive. I refuse to serve a system that has proven itself a common-sense failure yet refuses to admit defeat according to reason. New generations of humans are born already in debt. My nine-year-old has developed a cynical attitude about their future, asking me what the point is if life is just about going to a job and paying on loans. I believe we can do better, and we will, once we abandon our worship of reason to develop and apply relationship technology in school curriculums and business models. I want us to amaze ourselves with how easy collaboration can be when diversity replaces conformity as a societal value in deed, and we are individually permitted the space we need to be who we are. This especially includes children. References Christensen, C. M. (2010). How will you measure your life? Harvard Business Review, 88(7/8), 46-51. Duska, R. F. (2004). Six cures for current ethical breakdowns. Journal of Financial Service Professionals, 58(3) 23-26. Hill, L. A., Lineback, K. (2011). Are you a good boss—or a great one? Harvard Business Review, 89(1/2), 124-131. Electronic technology has enabled globalization to interconnect the entire world, allowing many companies new paths to profiting off new markets and a geographical disparity in the cost of living. Such opportunities for the renewal of profit bolstered the spirit of capitalism, practiced as the pursuit of profit as the primary goal; profit is a company’s concentrated self-interest (Duska, 2004). Profit pursuit competes to capture the value of limited resources at any cost, ignoring the reality humans depend on the renewal of those resources for survival. There’s a clever and dubious sleight of hand in equating a company’s personhood with human rights, in law, and in the conception of profit as self-interest: a person is not sustained by profit as a company is.
Supporting this sleight of hand, subtle changes in moral standards allow gaining profit to be a conditional exception of ethical behavior, ignoring the number one rule to rein in ethicality is to constrain self-interest: the pursuit of profit cannot be at the expense of others (Duska, 2004). Today, I bypass a surface-level analysis of a single organization’s ethicality to examine the contradiction of an immoral pursuit of profit encoded in a legal system that claims to operate in accordance with justice. I examine not a company, but an industry and its co-conspirator: pharmaceuticals and government. Enter Covid-19 vaccinations in the first pandemic in this age of globalization. As the pandemic hit, platitudes about interdependence and protecting others formed a convincing argument to mobilize the global population to immediately alter their behavior by isolating and adding mask-wearing to daily activities. Now a vaccine has been made available, those values and sentiments seem to have been forgotten by companies whose corporate patents, funded publicly, are being withheld from the global community (Buranyi, 2021). Immunization is accessible to and primarily profits wealthy nations, at the expense of less developed nations whose access to vaccinations is impeded by their limited economic means, all in the name of intellectual property (Hancock, 2020). Yet who originated the controversial idea of a vaccine? Variolation is a practice that addressed smallpox and preceded vaccinations. The earliest documentation suggests variolation originated in China, went through India and Africa. In the 18th century Onesimus, an enslaved man imported from Africa, taught his enslaver in the US, meanwhile, European ambassadors in Turkey brought the practice home (Cassidy, 2020). The very concept of vaccination is stolen intellectual property. A singular person named X, known by legend for inventing variolation in China was said to have been part alchemist, and only taught their techniques orally (Cassidy, 2020), yet where their royalty? The system of using intellectual property as the basis for a monopoly is, historically, a newer implementation; in the past, patent rights were waived in times of crisis (Buranyi, 2021). Here is further evidence the pursuit of profit has pushed out of boundaries that sustain it. Prioritizing profit above people is particularly clear in the case with India’s high Covid-19 infection rate. People there are dying so fast, funeral pyres are constructed wherever there is space in parks and parking lots and city trees are being chopped down to address a firewood shortage due to high numbers of cremations (Roy, 2021). Vaccine companies are likely to profit in a major way from the trauma these events create. “In India, the main underlying impetus of the vaccination campaign seems to be corporate profit (Roy, 2021, para. 35).” Beyond the profit issue, supplies manufactured in India and intended for use in the 92 poorest countries of the world have been co-opted by wealthier nations such as the UK and Canada who wish for access to more vaccinations while simultaneously opposing patent rights being conditionally waived (Prabhala & Menghaney, 2021). Despite the crimes against humanity happening on the ground in India (Roy, 2021), the set up of pharmaceutical companies to receive billions of dollars in public money to produce a product it would then sell to governments for profit (Hancock, 2021), and the hundreds of prominent experienced world leaders asking Joe Biden to require the patent waiver (PTI, 2021), President Biden still deliberates (Reuters, 2021), stalling. The immoral situation persists as long as the relevance of human life and the importance of corporate profit are weighed out and more people die. Biden is not demonstrating effective leadership. Pandering politicians are symbolic of the immoral ‘profit over people’ stance, visible in action, never word. Current politicians are also plagued by nonexistent limits, requiring endless more amounts of money for their campaigns. A political system fueled by money and power is too blinded by self-interest to represent the true needs of the people. Other than people dying, another aspect of urgency is in the production and distribution of vaccines. “Persistent low vaccine coverage in many countries makes it more likely for vaccine-resistant mutations to appear (OxFam, 2021, para. 3).” From a survey of 77 epidemiologists in 28 countries, “it is imperative for the safety of all citizens in all countries that people in developing countries are vaccinated as soon as possible (OxFam, 2021, para. 12).” Artificially created vaccine scarcity can create a loop of virus mutations and corporate profit when humanity is at its most desperate to move beyond the pandemic. At this point we can and have identified intellectually that the current system is set up to preserve and reward single-minded self-interest, to elevate profit above people at any cost. The actions of global political leaders are in direct opposition to prioritizing their constituents’ needs above the ceaseless mandate to extract more and more profit. Accumulated individual, organizational, and collective knowledge must be managed so that it is applied; we must learn to recognize the gap between ineffective explicit policy and complex tacit knowledge (Leveraging HR, 2009) and DO something. I suggest first removing money from politics altogether and reversing laws equating human life and corporate entity as analogous. Fredrick Douglass is credited with saying, “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress (Roy, 2021, para. 41).” The problem here is not that these pharmaceutical companies and state governments are not aligned with their own policies or the law. The problem is that the system supports single-minded self-interest, protecting those who profit at others’ expense from the narrative and natural consequences of their actions by making it legal. The law is written to justify and obscure oppression. The US was built on resources stolen using a corrupt legal system justifying forcible removal of indigenous people from their land and coercion of relocation and free labor through enslavement. A true justice system starts with reparations. There is no one coming to save us, global citizens, from a man-made system of governance that capitalizes off the human vulnerability of existence. It is up to us to stop enduring and ignoring injustice and shift our participation from conformity to commotion: non-violently, of course. What does that look like in your life: how do you resist? References Buranyi, S. (2021, April 24). The world is desperate for more Covid vaccines – patents shouldn’t get in the way. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/24/covid-vaccines-patents-pharmaceutical-companies-secrecy Cassidy, C. (2020, June 8). Who discovered the first vaccine? Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/who-discovered-first-vaccine/ Duska, R. F. (2004). Six cures for current ethical breakdowns. Journal of Financial Service Professionals, 58(3) 23-26. Hancock, J. (2020, August 24). Oxford’s COVID vaccine deal with AstraZeneca raises concerns about access and pricing. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2020/08/24/oxford-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-deal-pricing-profit-concerns/ Leveraging HR and knowledge management in a challenging economy. (2009, June). HR Magazine, 54(6), 1-9. OxFam International. (2021, March 30). Two-thirds of epidemiologists warn mutations could render current COVID vaccines ineffective in a year or less. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/two-thirds-epidemiologists-warn-mutations-could-render-current-covid-vaccines Prabhala, A., & Menghaney, L. (2021, April 2). The world’s poorest countries are at India’s mercy for vaccines. It’s unsustainable. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/02/india-in-charge-of-developing-world-covid-vaccine-supply-unsustainable PTI. (2021, April 27). USTR holds talks with Pfizer, Astrazeneca, over increased vaccine production, IP rights waiver. Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/ustr-holds-talks-with-pfizer-astrazeneca-over-increased-vaccine-production-ip-rights-waiver/articleshow/82268226.cms Reuters. (2021, April 28). White House considering intellectual property waiver for Covid-19 vaccines. Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/white-house-considering-intellectual-property-waiver-for-covid-19-vaccines/articleshow/82284519.cms Roy, A. (2021, April 28). ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/28/crime-against-humanity-arundhati-roy-india-covid-catastrophe The structure of the United States government was built as a system of checks and balances to ensure no branch, not even the President’s executive power, outranks another. Yet, only in the executive branch does all power reside in one person as the chief legal enforcer, which begs the question, can the president break the law? According to Richard Nixon after leaving office, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal (Napolitano, 2019).” However, former President Nixon resigned before he could be held accountable for his impeachable actions and was pardoned for his crimes when his Vice President became President (National Assistance Network, n.d.). Where does accountability lie in Presidential action: the position or the person? Are political consequences the same as legal consequences? Impeachment’s purpose is to remove a President from office, for reasons limited to high crimes and misdemeanors in obstructing justice or deceiving the public (Napolitano, 2019). Does this give the American President personal license to perform crimes against humanity with impunity? When a US President leaves office, do they become immune to legal consequences for their actions while in office? A legal amendment, HR 2678, No President is Above the Law, explicitly states tenure in office is not considered a statute of limitations, and applies to any offense committed before the date of the amendment’s enactment; it is on the calendar for consideration (116th Congress, 2020), but is it too little too late? On the world stage, the Rome Statute was created as the basis of authority for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in trying crimes against humanity as identified by the United Nations (UN) (Vernon, n.d.). Crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC are those which concern the international community, as outlined in Article 5, namely the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression (International Criminal Court, 2011). Yet a closer look at the limits of the ICC’s authority reveals the US is not bound by these laws. Instead, “hegemons like the United States create and finance international organizations like the United Nations to spread their ideals and values throughout the international system and to solidify their grasp on power (Hussain, 2011, pg 3).” The Security Council, the only authoritative branch of the UN, is currently comprised solely of hegemons, those nations whose authority is defined by domination of people and nations (Hussain, 2011). This legal analysis aims to critique how the arrogance, selective disclosure, deception, ignorance, insensitivity, intolerance, regulation, reputation, secrecy, and testosterosis of hegemonic actors, chiefly the US, shape a positive reputation of the nation (Lukaszewski & Noakes-Fry, 2013) so absolute only its people can disrupt the illusion. The rationale with which policy decisions are made steers power orientations toward crimes against humanity, fueled by an obsession with appearing ‘right,’ inadvertently threatening humanity’s future in the process. The political agenda of maintaining absolute power through military and political action remains the same no matter which party is dominant, as in the recent Trump to Biden transition and the subsequent retaliatory bombing of Syria. The political agenda of maintaining absolute power through military and political action remains the same no matter which party is dominant, as in the recent Trump to Biden transition and the subsequent retaliatory bombing of Syria." The 19th-century historian Lord Acton is credited with saying, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” which can refer to how power causes a leader to grant themselves exempt from common ethics because their decisions are based on the common good (Riggio, 2009). The corrupting quality of power has been defined by a study that shows power justifies ethical shortcuts, heightening pre-existing ethical tendencies (Shea, 2012). Since most political elections in the US are defined by the need for money to win, the interests and values of the affluent are over-represented, which translates to self-serving political priorities and policy (Page, 2013). The interests of the wealthy prioritize maintaining systems of control whereby capital and power were obtained, morphing beyond a shortcut of ethics, becoming a system of ethics unto itself outside recognizable honorable behavior. Those who occupy positions of power can control the narrative and define how their actions are labeled, defying conventional definitions and denying the impact of their actions. Enter the justification for continued US involvement in the oil-rich and conflict-ridden lands of the “Middle East.” For decades the military presence of the US destabilized the region while announcing its presence as peacekeepers (Gordon, 2000). Then 9/11 happened and the narrative shifted as the search for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction became the assumption-driven justification for US presence and escalation of military action (Kessler, 2019). While the loss of life was significant on both sides of the conflict, the destruction of land and homes of civilians further destabilized the area and US occupation led to the rise of ISIS (Bennis, Petersen-Smith, 2021). The existence of ISIS became the new rationalization for continued US presence. US aggression continues to escalate conflicts, which can be used as justification to maintain its role as the world’s police (Hjelmgaard, 2021). A new wave of intensified conflict is visible in Trump’s administration carrying out the January 2020 assassination of Iran’s General Soleimani and continuing economic sanctions which limit access to food and medicine in the region, particularly during the global pandemic (Bennis & Petersen-Smith, 2021; Sahimi, 2019). Before delivering on the promise to prioritize diplomacy over military action which got him elected, or attending to the needs of struggling Americans, on February 25, Biden bombed Syria, an act which Iran claims will strengthen ISIS (Connelly, 2021). The US’s escalation of conflict in its self-appointed paradoxical role as peace police isn’t just seen in a single rocket being responded to with seven missiles, which Syria called “cowardly and systemic American aggression (Baldor, Burns, Abdul-Zahra, 2021, para 24).” The Pentagon’s narrative labeled the attack as “proportionate and defensive (Hjelmgaard, 2021, para 2)” indicating it’s out of touch with reality. An unidentified rocket launched by Iranians in Iran on an invasive presence’s building in Erbil, killing one foreign contractor and wounding one American is different than the US’s response: an airstrike of seven 500-pound bombs on Syria’s sovereign land with a death count report ranging from one to twenty-two and at least four wounded (Benjamin & Davies, 2021; Cooper & Schmitt, 2021; Nahmias, 2021). Biden’s attack was made without Congressional approval, based on classified intelligence, making it illegal not only in Syria’s eyes but also in the eyes of several US lawmakers (Benjamin & Davies, 2021; Nelson, 2021). The missile airstrike also complicates nuclear negotiations with Iran, making success harder to achieve, particularly when Biden’s promise of extrication from the area was delivered instead as escalation (Benjamin & Davies, 2021). Yet the rogue rocket attack was framed transactionally by a member of the Pentagon as “an important test for the new administration (Jakes & Schmitt, 2021, para 11).” How is it possible the absolute authority of the US continues to be threatened by every little retaliation? The State Department’s spokesperson affirmed the US’s position as a hegemon actor with a statement after the Erbil attack, “In order for America to pursue our values and to pursue our interests around the world, we have to be engaged in the world, and, of course, engagement in some corners of the world carries added risks (Jakes & Schmitt, 2021, para 8).” The trivialization of human life as a risk in maintaining power and control epitomizes the ease with which the US grants itself ethical exemptions in enacting crimes against humanity. The trivialization of human life as a risk in maintaining power and control epitomizes the ease with which the US grants itself ethical exemptions in enacting crimes against humanity." American values and interests claim to be in service of upholding what is right, yet the big picture view of their actions reveals hypocrisy. Crimes against humanity in the Syrian civil war have been pinned on President Bashar al-Assad and his regime, without examining the role of the US in creating an environment for those human rights violations. The US set the global precedent for genocide when it killed the indigenous people living on its lands to usurp them, making space for the kidnapping and enslavement of African laborers. The victim dimension created by the US to amass the capital that is the basis of its formidable power and influence has yet to be managed, and eventually, the US must be held accountable. Not by law, which was created to validate its crimes against humanity, but by justice carried out by its people, who have the power to do so, when united in purpose and love for humanity. Community core values underwrite the definition of what are common human rights: healthy and safe communities, protection from environmental threats, an assured and reasonable quality of life, economic security, safeguarding the value of possessions and property, and addressing peer concerns (Lukaszewski & Noakes-Fry, 2013). When the people stand together and demand nothing less than these human rights for every human living and those yet to be born, the history books will more correctly reflect the US’s true reputation by erasing its legitimacy entirely. There is no justice on stolen land, in structures built with kidnapped labor, by false legal power. Power to the people! There is no justice on stolen land, in structures built with kidnapped labor, legitimized by false legal power." References
Baldor, L. C., Burns, R., and Abdul-Zahra, Q. (2021, February 26). Biden: Strikes in Syria sent warning to Iran to be ‘careful’. https://apnews.com/article/us-syria-airstrike-kills-1- 34b4d7ac56fa8d0d2db8dc2ec8e921d6 Benjamin, M. & Davies, N. J. S. (2021, February 27). Biden’s reckless Syria bombing: This is not the diplomacy he promised. Salon. https://www.salon.com/2021/02/27/bidens-reckless-syria-bombing-this-is-not-the-diplomacy-he-promised/ Bennis, P., & Petersen-Smith, K. (2021, February 26). Dangerous US bombing of Syria worsens regional instability and threatens Iran nuclear deal. Common Dreams. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/02/26/dangerous-us-bombing-syria-worsens-regional-instability-and-threatens-iran-nuclear Connelly, E. A. (2021, February 27). Iran claims US bombing in Syria will strengthen ISIS. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2021/02/27/iran-claims-us-bombing-in-syria-will-strengthen-isis/ Cooper, H., & Schmitt, E. (2021, February 25). U.S. airstrikes in Syria target Iran-backed militias that rocketed American troops in Iraq. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/us/politics/biden-syria-airstrike-iran.html Gordon, P.H. (2000, September 1). No way out: The essential U.S. role in the Middle East. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/no-way-out-the-essential-u-s-role-in-the-middle-east/ Hjelmgaard, K. (2021, February 26). Biden’s Syria airstrike test US role as world’s police, get bipartisan support – and criticism. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/02/26/syria-bombing-biden-airstrikes-mark-test-us-role-worlds-police/6831034002/ Hussain, Z. Z. (2011, March 19). The reality of US-UN relations. E-International Relations. https://www.e-ir.info/2011/03/19/the-reality-of-us-un-relations/ International Criminal Court. (2011). Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. https://www.icc-cpi.int/resourcelibrary/official-journal/rome-statute.aspx#article2 Jakes, L., & Schmitt, E. (2021, February 21). Seeking fresh start with Iraq, Biden avoids setting red lines with Iran. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/politics/biden-iraq-iran.html Kessler, G. (2019, May 22). The Iraq war and WMDs: An intelligence failure or White House spin? The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/iraq-war-wmds-an-intelligence-failure-or-white-house-spin/ Lukaszewski, J. E., & Noakes-Fry, K. (Eds.). (2013). Lukaszewski on crisis communication: What your CEO needs to know about reputation risk and crisis management. Brookfield, CT: Rothstein Associates. Nahmias, O. (2021, February 27). US attack in Syria: Why now? What can be learned? Experts weigh in. The Jerusalem Post. https://www.jpost.com/international/us-attack-in-syria-why-now-what-can-be-learned-experts-weigh-in-660290 Napolitano, A. (2019, March 21). Can a President legally break the law? Newsmax. https://www.newsmax.com/judgeandrewpnapolitano/cia-fbi-nixon/2019/03/21/id/908023/ National Assistance Network. (n.d.) Is the President of the United States above the law? https://www.nationalassistancenetwork.org/blog/2018/12/18/is-the-president-of-the-united-states-above-the-law/ Nelson, S. (2021, February 26). Biden faces bipartisan backlash over Syria bombing. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2021/02/26/biden-faces-bipartisan-backlash-over-syria-bombing/ Riggio, R. E. (2009, August 8). How power corrupts leaders. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/200908/how-power-corrupts-leaders Sahimi, M. (2019, July 30). Economic sanctions will kill tens of thousands of innocent Iranians. Lobe Log. https://lobelog.com/economic-sanctions-will-kill-tens-of-thousands-of-innocent-iranians/ Shea, C. (2012, October). Why power corrupts. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-power-corrupts-37165345/ A global natural disaster that has affected members of civilization at every intersectional identity to varying degrees continues to create victims through the unseen forces of microbiology and hegemony. Nearly a year later, the crisis remains active. This is the coronavirus pandemic, which has certainly created a new urgent awareness of crisis communication and our interdependence as a species (Mounk, 2020; Mull, 2020; Pinsker, 2020; Proctor, 2021; Tembe and Sehume, 2020). Beyond a crisis of natural origins, its broader effects render Covid-19 a political and socio-economic crisis (United Nations Development Programme, n.d.). Covid has also led to increased domestic abuse (Scott-Clarke, 2020; Taub, 2020). The most impactful part of this crisis for me has been as a backdrop influence affecting and interfering with responses to other long-standing crises which also came to a head in 2020. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) nonviolent movement demands past due racial justice in response to continued aggravated and flagrant murders of black and indigenous people at the hands of police and the complicity of the legal system in upholding injustice. Media coverage of institutional overreaction has convinced the passively racist majority that BLM protests are a violent threat to democracy (Mansoor, 2020). Roxane Gay elaborated on the intersection of Covid-19 and BLM, highlighting the absence of coherent leadership to face these compounded issues (2020). Adding to these crises, this year I had a front-row seat to early effects of the climate crisis. My home was on the edge of the evacuation zone during the devastating Oregon wildfires this summer which raged through old-growth forests and new-growth towns. For a time my home was uninhabitable due to hazardous air quality. According to an Oregon State University forestry professor, the increasing frequency of fires reveals the effects of land management policies and climate change (Urness, 2020). Much of the media coverage has focused on numerical losses of property and homes (Rogoway, 2020; Associated Press, 2020). Does this indicate money could be a viable solution? During the pandemic, BLM and wildfires, I was researching the US dollar as a broken brand of currency for my grad school studies. Divorced from material value by FDR and Nixon, the dollar’s worth as the world reserve currency is tied only to global trust in the US government. My research helped me understand the scope of the global economic crisis poised to worsen existing political, economic, social, and environmental layers of crises when the US dollar collapses. The global debt is more than 300% of the global GDP (Heller, 2020), proving we cannot spend our way out of these problems, even if we could agree on what we were buying. Media attention amplifies the omnipresence of these crises and the arguments that stall their resolution. Replaying firsthand images of violence, with different media outlets appealing to biased perspectives of interpretation only adds fuel to the fire. Media coverage of the many crises in 2020 complicates cooperation by magnifying polarized opinions about the crises, competing with one another, and creating a chaotic cacophony of conflict. How do we advocate for our own survival when we have become unwilling or unable to hear one another? Is this what our leaders are for? Isn’t this why we value democracy? We need to sort through the confusion and contextualize a path to connection, yet most positions of power are occupied by people who leaned into polarized politics to achieve their station. Current frames of institutional power rely on accumulated experience, making decisions to do what has already been done even when it doesn’t work, and responding to the presence of victims once they have been made, never before. We know from generations of experience that validation by material evidence is an inadequate path to stem the global crisis of violence, particularly violence against womxn. Attempts at structural change within the existing system often result in violence adapting to become even more invisible. This is another way violence is a menace, not only preventing change but validating the belief that controlling what is visible is power. As the crises of 2020 continue to remind us, a fresh approach is needed to address crisis risks in the pre-crisis stage (The Arthur W. Page Center, n.d.). The common denominator in predicting crises is the use of coercion to extract value without establishing and upholding mutual informed consent. Oppression is positively reinforced as power flows to those who take unfair advantage, creating violent separation of humans from their rights which often results in trauma, individually, relationally, generationally, and collectively. To change globalized habits around violence, we need to dig in from an intentional spectrum of intersectional identities. By looking at the mechanics of three specific overlapping perspectives, without reacting to one another’s perceptions, we can double check one another for the invisible assumptions of our cognitive biases. From a collective and global standpoint, 1) the function and ownership of media needs to be examined, 2) structure which creates coercive, traumatizing practices in duplicate must be reverse engineered, and 3) the complete picture of electronic technology’s history, growth, and current trajectories in terms of resource use and function. As nuclear physicist Albert Allen Bartlett is known for saying, “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” Said another way by a fellow blogger, humans do understand the exponential function, they just don’t think it applies to them (Cohen, 2014). Perhaps it is the privilege-fed ego directing current leadership decisions which carries that belief, not the human race as a whole. It’s time to see what we’re made of! References
Associated Press. (2020, October 27). Oregon wildfires destroyed more than 4,000 homes. Here’s where. The Oregonian. https://www.oregonlive.com/wildfires/2020/10/oregon-wildfires-destroyed-more-than-4000-homes-heres-where.html Cohen, D. (2014, March 18). Humans DO understand the exponential function. Decline of the Empire. https://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/03/humans-do-understand-the-exponential-function.html Gay, R. (2020, May 30). Remember, no one is coming to save us. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/sunday/trump-george-floyd-coronavirus.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab Heller, M. (2020, January 13). Global debt-to-GDP hits record 322% in Q3. CFO. https://www.cfo.com/credit/2020/01/global-debt-to-gdp-hits-record-322-in-q3/ Mansoor, S. (2020, September 5). 93% of Black Lives Matter protests have been peaceful, new report finds. Time. https://time.com/5886348/report-peaceful-protests/ Mounk, Y. (2020, March 10). Cancel everything. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-cancel-everything/607675/ Mull, Amanda. (2020, February 28). The problem with telling sick workers to stay home. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-could-hit-american-workers-especially-hard/607213/?utm_source=pocket-newtab Pinsker, J. (2020, March 26). The four possible timelines for life returning to normal. Proctor, R. A. (2021, January 7). How the coronavirus crisis disrupted the global urban order. Arab News. https://www.arabnews.com/node/1788936/middle-east Rogoway, M. (2020, October 1). Oregon wildfires burned $1 billion in homes and belongings last month, new tally finds. The Oregonian. https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2020/10/oregon-wildfires-burned-1-billion-in-homes-and-belongings-last-month-new-tally-finds.html Scott-Clarke, E. (2020). The shadow pandemic. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/10/world/coronavirus-impact-domestic-abuse-global/ Taub, A. (2020, April 6). A new Covid-19 crisis: Domestic abuse rises worldwide. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domestic-violence.html Tembe, P. Z., and Sehume, J. (2020, April 20). Covid-19 is a global crisis – but also an opportunity for new co-operation. Daily Maverick. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-04-20-covid-19-is-a-global-crisis-but-also-an-opportunity-for-new-co-operation/ The Arthur W. Page Center. (n.d.) Crisis Communication. https://www.pagecentertraining.psu.edu/public-relations-ethics/ethics-in-crisis-management/lesson-1-prominent-ethical-issues-in-crisis-situations/crisis-communication/ United Nations Development Programme. (n.d.) COVID-19 pandemic. https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/coronavirus.html Urness, Z. (2020, October 30). Oregon’s 2020 wildfire season brought a new level of destruction. It could be just the beginning. Salem Statesman Journal. https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2020/10/30/climate-change-oregon-wildfires-2020/6056170002/ Advertising is a powerful medium of communication, often painting a picture and inviting the viewer to participate. Whether the ad asks for its audience to engage with a particular product, brand, company, commitment, or movement, each picture envisions a change. The most effective way to get a message to stick is by using strategic storytelling (Conger, 2005). Such a story imagines the audience as the hero, challenging transformation by having a goal, obstacles, help available, a moral, and possibly most important, honesty (Simone, 2019). From many marginalized intersectional identities, the call for change to existing social paradigms cannot be ignored. Organizations that answer this call and establish their position regarding diversity encourage value-based participation and loyalty. When people like what a company represents and stands for, they are more likely to support it (Davrod, 2019). When a company uses its resources and platform to increase visibility around the lived experiences of marginalized people, they show those experiences matter. The following ads exhibit support for social movements around marginalized identities by increasing awareness around the internalized stigma that is so often an invisible experience. Marginalization is often conveyed in nonverbal ways, and Proctor & Gamble have two campaigns that address common experiences for marginalized identities along racial and sex/gender dimensions. The target audience for both these ads is the general public which Proctor & Gamble serve, who have personal biases, as we all do. Unconscious, unexamined, implicit biases systematically produce discrimination (Dovidio and Fiske, 2012). The target audience Proctor & Gamble is reaching for is the marginalized group represented in their campaigns. Proctor & Gamble are inviting individuals and their communities to see them as an ally and reciprocate the support by building feelings of loyalty toward their brands. In “The Look,” a day in the life of a black man is viewed from alternating perspectives within the same scenes. Several scenarios of racial microaggressions are visible in a wide range of daily life scenarios. The tension in the situations is noticeable and the man is challenged to minimize conflict by not reacting to others’ judgments. The ad takes a surprising twist as the black man enters a court of law as a judge and public servant. The goal is to reduce biases and the challenge is existing unconscious bias. Creating visibility of a black man commanding respect in a courtroom as the highest authority challenges existing norms where white men occupy most public positions of authority. By experiencing several scenarios, viewer-participants are challenged to recognize when they are participating in racial microaggressions and to think about how they would respond. The moral of the ad is reflected at the end, “Let’s talk about the look, so we can see beyond it. #talkaboutbias (Saturday Morning, 2020)” “The Pause” interviews LGBTQ+ individuals and couples about the stigma around expressing and owning their relationship. Owning a queer identity can be risky, which can result in minimizing who they are and suppressing their truth out of fear. The narratives start with the experience of hiding who they are and how it feels, moving on to envision what change would feel like. The goal is to promote inclusion, allow viewers to empathize with another’s perspective. The obstacles are existing biases against differences that inform beliefs of discrimination. The moral is stated in print, “When love surrounds, there is no pause. #leadwithlove (Grey, 2020)” Here again, Proctor & Gamble position themselves as allies to marginalized identities by promoting visibility. The target audience is LGBTQ+ individuals, their families, friends, and other allies. Proctor & Gamble benefit from this content by representing itself as a corporate entity with an awareness of and position on current social issues. By establishing the company’s values on these polarizing topics, they are taking action to support equality among dualities: white and black define one another as queer and straight do too. Taking action strengthens the brand’s appeal to individuals with marginalized identity intersections, as well as their families and allies for social change. Transgender identity is discriminated against to a greater degree, even within LGBTQ+ social movements because their existence challenges both gender and sexual cultural norms (Martinez, n.d). In this way, transgender identities represent the diversity of the gender and sexuality spectrums, which are unfamiliar, even invisible, to most adults. Gender options are becoming more widely available, as evidenced by survey options, the gender binary allows for male/female gender and transgender, and there’s also nonbinary or non-conforming (Fryrear, 2016). Trans issues are identity issues that create more space for everyone to be who they are more freely, disrupting the norm of conforming to the identity assigned at birth and enforced via enculturation. A major part of trans identity issues is related to gender expression, including appearance and name. Legal institutions often inhibit personal expression with bureaucratic limitations that encourage and enforce conformity to pre-existing identity labels. This issue is completely invisible to anyone who has not tried to drastically change their appearance and or name from accepted and expected norms. Mastercard speaks to this experience with their ad creating visibility around the unique challenges of safety that come with being transgender. In the ad, a voiceover speaks to the concept of a secure payment as a person goes through a routine convenient store purchase. A story unfolds about vulnerability and risk and the additional layers of meaning in words that must be navigated when a person extends their identity beyond accepted norms of self-expression. The visibility here is around the experience of insecure payments, being “judged, questioned, disrespected, humiliated, harassed, even assaulted simply because the name on your card doesn’t match how you identify (McCann, 2020).” Again, using multiple perspectives, space is made for more empathy toward difference. In the ad’s story, the goal is a successful transaction, the barriers are invisible ones society determined through bias and enforces systemically through bureaucratic norms, such as a narrow definition of what success looks like. The truth in this ad is that every person’s identity and security are worth protecting, and some need special attention in this area. Mastercard benefits by setting themselves apart from other card services by offering a buffer between a person’s legal name and their real, chosen name. This topic is important to me personally, as the name I choose to go by is different from my birth name, yet changing my legal name would lead to undesirable complications in my role as a mother. We all have a right to be who we are, and choose how to express it, yet for a time, we forgot this truth. For many years, a cognitive bias known as ‘illusory correlation’ normalized desires through social organization and enculturation in predictable ways that were capitalized upon by those with access to wealth (Cornwall, 1997). Through those decades and centuries, cultural norms were constructed which made being different from straight, cis-gender, able, fit, white, and male more difficult in invisible ways. Now the focus is on making adversity experienced more visible, acknowledging the truth we need more space for a broader range of diversity in this reality we share equally. The stories of these experiences need to be told to increase visibility which can then lead to change.
References Conger, J. (2005). The impact of strategic storytelling [Video file]. Dublin, Ireland: Skillsoft Limited. Cornwall, R. (1997). Deconstructing silence: The queer political economy of the social articulation of desire. Review of Radical Political Economics, 29(1), 1-130. Davrod, D. (2019, May 31). The Power of advertising. Data Driven Investor. Retrieved from https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/the-power-of-advertising-863da2b1c8a4 Dovidio, J. F., and Fiske, S. T. (2012, March 15). Under the radar: How unexamined biases in decision-making processes in clinical interactions can contribute to health care disparities. American Journal of Public Health, 102 (5): 945-52. Fryrear, A. (2016, June 23). How to write gender questions for a survey. Survey Gizmo. Retrieved from https://www.surveygizmo.com/resources/blog/how-to-write-survey-gender-questions/ Grey. (2020, June 22). P&G The pause [Video]. Ads of the World. Retrieved from https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/film/pg_the_pause Martinez, K. (n.d.). Transgender discrimination within the LGBT Community. Pacific Northwell. Retrieved from https://pacificnorthwell.com/transgender-discrimination-within-lgbt-community/ McCann. (2020, July 6). True name by Mastercard [Video]. Ads of the World. Retrieved from https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/film/mastercard_true_name_by_mastercard Saturday Morning. (2020, August 25). P&G the look [Video]. Ads of the World. Retrieved from https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/film/pg_the_look Simone, S. (2019, December 3). The 5 things every (great) marketing story needs. Copyblogger. Retrieved from https://copyblogger.com/marketing-stories/ |
AuthorLady J is a non-binary, neurodivergent, queer femme. Archives
January 2022
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