NAVEL GAZING

Popular song lyrics can slice thin Human Nature’s tendency for fabricating wannabe wisdom. Kris Kristofferson has never been one to jump on bandwagons or to wait in line. His fate has been to dig relentlessly at the bottom of his hole. Still, no matter how long or how deep you dig, the hole just gets deeper. The bottom of the hole is an illusion. In his song ‘The Pilgrim’ he reveals a man who spends a lifetime searching for his elusive ‘Something-or-other.’ The pearl discovered there goes; “. . . and he keeps right on a changing for the better or the worse, Searching for a shrine he’s never found. Never knowing if believing is a blessing or a curse, Or if the going up is worth the coming down.” 

Navel Gazing is generally mocked when it is someone else but in the 1st person it feels so right, so necessary we wear out the welcome. Curiously, with a similar song title, Simon & Garfunkel address the same conundrum in ‘The Boxer’: “. . . I have squandered my resistance for a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises. Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” In both songs, if all you get are these hook lines you can fill in the blanks. An important failsafe in Human Nature is ‘Denial.’ Feeling ‘Right’ is a moral imperative even at the expense of being correct. Navel Gazing lets you roll uncomfortable ideas around like in ‘The Cain Mutiny’ Captain Queeg’s ball bearings. It gets easier to believe the unbelievable or to dismiss an inescapable certainty. When we do that we become detestable hypocrites, with the ease of scratching an itch. Historian/Author Yuval Harari observed, “Your story doesn’t have to be true. It just has to work for you.” 

Our Comfort Zone is the emotional boundary where, when I approach, I must either turn back or buy into denial. Most of us are familiar with CZ rhetoric. We like to believe that with an open mind and some courage we can venture out into unexplored, threatening scenarios be they real or imagined. If you overcome the fear of spiders or change a personal trait so that telling truth even when it hurts, it doesn’t mean you’ve overcome the CZ. It means you’ve expanded it and you have more options than before. Sadly, what feels like an expanded CZ may be a fraudulent smokescreen with the predictable result, believing the unbelievable or dismissing the inescapable certainty. 

My intention was to Gaze on the Law Of Unintended Consequences. It states that any intervention in a complex system tends to yield unintended and often, undesirable outcomes. When that happens, the leap to denial and CZ tricks is the most comfortable path to take. We (especially leaders) hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest. Individuals and small groups are better with accountability than groups that require leadership. Within a leadership hierarchy, deflecting culpability is the highest priority in human endeavor. 

George Carlin was a standup comic who pushed back against all of society’s self righteous transgressions. I loved his humor because it exposed our flaws. The center of his CZ was synchronized with mine but too much of George Carlin was not good for me and I have to keep him at a distance. I think of it as, not trusting the CZ, like knowing when to stop eating the food you like best. People still kill each other over what they believe and that part of our legacy is way-far outside my CZ. I love having feelings that translate into action and experience. But keep in mind that those same feelings are suspect at best and dangerous if left to their own device. So far, as I perceive it, my CZ is open to being wrong and willing to change my ways, to be in progress rather than carved in stone. Then again, maybe it's a smoke screen and I’m no better than a nasty Hillary Clinton or the reprobate shit-sack in the White House. If this is navel gazing then that’s what we do when they change the locks at work and give your parking place to someone who wasn’t born yet when you were hired.