Always Be Ready For Peace

How often does a bully seek out forgiveness and reconciliation with their victim? It happened to me twice in high school with individuals who bullied me in eighth grade. It happened again as an adult professional. And I wonder if it would not have happened if I hadn't been ready to make peace.

In eighth grade, I moved from Pasadena to Glendora. That can be a tough age to enter a new community with no friends. I didn't know the social norms there and felt very out of place coming from an ethnically diverse, working class, inner-city school, going into an overwhelmingly white, and white collar, suburban school.

There was a girl in eighth grade who I thought was the prettiest in the school. In the Library one day, her friends caught me looking at her. One came over and said to me that the girl liked me, and I should ask her out. Based on that encouragement, I did. Then the girl mocked me in front of her friends.

But it didn't end there. When she and her friends saw me in the hallway, she would continue to mock me. That continued for the rest of the year.  Throughout high school I hardly asked out any girls, afraid I would be rejected. Only if I was extremely confident that the girl liked me, would I consider it. There were lots of girls I was crazy about in high school, but I didn't ask them out for this reason.

While this was very unpleasant, I overcame this experience, and I did have a few girlfriends in high school. My last high school sweetheart, I married. So, it's turned out extremely well. If I had dated more in high school, I might not have been available when I met my wife who truly loved me.

I was glad when that girl who ridiculed me did not go to the same high school the following year.  After a couple years or so, she did transfer to the same school, though. I didn't have much contact with her, and we didn't really acknowledge each other. Then, in our senior year, we were both involved in an extra-curricular event. She had an opportunity make fun of me, but she didn't. At one point that day, she pulled me aside to apologize and to pay me a compliment. It was a wonderful surprise.

I had a few other experiences with bullying in the 8th grade as well. The worst physical beating I remember receiving was triggered by a misunderstanding. As kids that age often do, I was experimenting with the use of profanity based on how I'd heard adults use various terms. At the time, I was fascinated by the use of the term, "son of a b****," as a general exclamation of unhappiness, rather than applying it to a person.

One day in PE, I was tagged out during a game of softball and uttered the term. The boy at first base thought I had directed it at him and insulted his mother. I forgot I had even said the phrase. As we were going back to the locker room, a few of the guys kept telling me I'd better watch out.

"[So-and-so] is pissed," said one.

"You'd better watch out," said another. "He's going to beat you up in the locker room."

I said they didn't know what they were talking about. I never insulted him. They must be confused.

So, I walked into the cave-like locker room out of the bright, midday California sun. The meager light from the caged incandescent bulbs was akin to total darkness, and out of that murk came So-and-so's disembodied angry face. Beside it was his disembodied angry fist.

After one punch to the face, and being unable to see clearly, I curled into a fetal ball with my back in the corner. His fists kept coming, bruising my scalp, my hands, my arms. My face, kidneys and abdomen were protected by my hands and the concrete corner of the right-angled locker room entrance. Eventually the boy was pulled off of me.

I can't remember the extent of my injuries. I think I had a black eye from the first strike. I remember being most astonished by the fact that he kept hitting my head. I thought, the head is hard. It's hurting me, but it's not a very effective target. I'm not exposing my vulnerable parts, but he's continuing to beat on me anyway.

As a result of this beating, my dad, who had custody of us on the weekends, enrolled me in Aikido at Pasadena Aikikai. A fellow member of Orange Grove Friends Meeting had been training there and recommended it as a non-violent form of self-defense. This appealed to Dad, who became a Conscientious Objector and pacifist after enlisting in the Army during the Korean War.

This is not like the story of Karate kid. Aikido training is usually non-competitive, so no tournaments, and I didn't go on to fight the kid who bullied me. I don't think I trained in Aikido for more than about six months, then stopped going.

However, I loved Aikido. Also, the confidence I developed from that training helped me to deal with the fear of being confronted by a bully. Every time this happened in high school, I stood my ground. I didn't escalate the situation, and I didn't show my fear. The result was always that the bully stood there facing off with me for a long-tense moment, and then just walked away.

I eventually went back to Aikido (several times) after high school, and one of my proudest accomplishments is my shodan (first degree black belt) that I earned in 2006. While I find it as difficult to regularly attend Aikido classes as it is to attend Friends Meeting these days, I'm far happier for the small ways I have have learned to apply the principles of centering and inner peace that I learned from both practices.

The boy who had beaten me up so badly continued to share a couple classes with me in eighth grade. My mom arranged a meeting for us with the principal, the boy, and his father, and we didn't speak to each other after that. He didn't end up going to the same high school, either. However, at one point in high school, I'd gone to the grocery store with my mom, and there he was, working at Stater Bros., bagging our groceries. I was so surprised and relieved when he looked me in the eye and apologized to me, there in the grocery store.

I've written before about abusive bosses. I've had several over the years, and in each case I have managed to transfer to a different department within my organization. I've then gone on to be successful in some area, and I've always tried to leave behind a legacy of work that earns me respect.

Toxic Bosses: My own experiences with abusive bosses and a look at the US Army's new 360 review policy that's trying to change the culture of abusive leadership.

On one occasion, I got an invitation for lunch from a former boss. It was awkward, and I did not really want to have lunch with this person after how they had treated me when I reported to them. But, not wanting to be rude, I of course accepted the invitation.

I was blown away when they told me the reason they had asked me to lunch was simply to apologize for the way they had treated me and to thank me for all the great work I had done for them. It was so refreshing, and I gladly accepted their apology. I was also glad to see that this person looked happier and healthier than I had ever seen them before.

In all three cases, the immediate solution involved separation from the bully. I was resilient. I went on with my life, and was pretty well adjusted. The bully then re-entered my life.  I did not cower away from them, and I did not seek retribution. I treated them with civility. In each case, they took it upon themselves to apologize.

I know that lots of people have been bullied worse than I have, and I don't pretend to have all the answers for bullying. However, I do believe that bullying does great harm to the bully, sometimes greater than the harm to the person being bullied, who, like me, might recover and go on to a happy life. The bully goes through life unhappy with their personal and work relationships, unable to experience the joy that comes from being at peace with those around them.

If you have been bullied, I hope my experience can help you find your own way to be resilient and forgive the bullies in your life. If one comes to you, asking to make peace, I hope you will be ready and able to do so, both for your own well being and theirs. A great weight lifted from me when I forgave my bullies. And, while it doesn't absolve in any way their own responsibility for the harm they caused me, I admire the personal growth and courage it took for them to seek my forgiveness.

If you have bullied people, I hope you find the courage to seek forgiveness of those you have wronged. We all make mistakes, and but those mistakes do us much less harm in the long run if we can learn from them. You may not receive forgiveness from those you have wronged, but I believe the act of asking will also bring you a measure of peace.

Toxic Bosses

This is a compelling look at "toxic bosses," and the US Army's effort to combat this internal threat.

I've had my own traumatic experiences with toxic bosses over the years, and several friends and family have shared their own experiences with toxic bosses. I'm impressed with this enlightened approach to leadership that the Army is taking. It's particularly interesting to note that this came out of research into suicide cases, and a result of the Army's decision to employ anthropologists.

There are also toxic colleagues. Having a good boss helps to mitigate that, but the strategy I've usually employed with toxic bosses is to leave. It's risky to try and resolve the toxic boss problem otherwise, unless the institution provides a safe means to do so.

I was in a department once where all the staff got together and went over the head of the manager to complain. Our boss's boss sat the department and the manager down in a room and told us all to voice our issues directly to the manager, and gave the manager the chance to respond and address the issues. Things were a little better after that. However, that manager was given another department later on, and continued to create problems for as long as he or she was with the organization.

A 360-degree review process as the Army is proposing is definitely a step in the right direction. However, I have not always felt I could count on my boss's boss for support. Sometimes it's a case of the abuse rolling down hill. Although, I'd also like to note that being abused by your own boss is no excuse to abuse your own subordinates - I've been in the middle of that before, too, and had to shelter my team and stand up for them.

If you have an abusive boss, it's important to remember that you can leave. When the economy is bad, when you have a family to provide for, bills to pay, it's easy to feel trapped in a job. Emotional abuse takes a toll on you, and it's difficult to make time to look for a new job. However, staying in a toxic environment can lead to a host of personal problems outside of work. It can lead to depression and anxiety, so I can understand how it could eventually lead to suicide.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu describes the tactic of pushing deep into enemy territory right away. The reason for this is to prevent desertion. For a conscripted medieval army, desertion was a huge problem. He goes on to advise generals to put their forces in a position of no escape because they will fight harder if winning is the only way to survive. Always give your enemy a way to escape so that the enemy force will be tempted to desert.

That approach may have been a necessary evil with a conscripted medieval army, but it's out of place in a modern volunteer army. However, military personnel often find themselves far from home and their support network, especially if they are deployed overseas. Once they become active duty, they are legally bound to fulfill their contract of service, like it or not. Civilians like me can walk away from a job much more easily.

If you're in an abusive work environment, I think it's extremely important to talk to someone. Many people don't want to burden their spouse or partner, so there are many other options. Most employers offer some sort of EAP (Employee Assistance Program). Someone in HR may be available to talk about a "hypothetical" situation (if you don't keep it hypothetical, they may be obligated to report the incident - and this may be true of all managers). A trusted colleague, or former colleague, can be great support.

Blabbing to everyone about your problems could cause you a lot of trouble, but being able to talk with someone who understands the situation did wonders to ease my burden. That can be enough to help you get through until you land another job or manage a transfer to another department.

If you're thinking about fighting to keep your job, keep in mind another lesson I took from The Art of War: Never fight a battle unless the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor.

Google+ Stalker App

I'm conflicted by Google. I've been a fan for a long time. I use a lot of Google services (e.g., this is a Google Blogger site). However, there are privacy concerns because they track your search and browsing habits, and scan the content of messages in Gmail.

The benefits of Google's services are considerable. The only other company that offers a comparable level of integration between apps and business-friendly (enterprise-friendly) services is Microsoft.

And it's growing increasingly clear that Google+ is the cornerstone of how we will access all their services. YouTube comments are now done through Google+, and Google+ comments show up in search results. However, this strategy will fail unless they can prove themselves worthy of our trust.

There's an efficiency to making Google+ the central user profile for all Google services. I see it like using Active Directory on an enterprise network to manage all users in the organization. When you log into your computer at work, you may not realize this Microsoft product is being used to manage your user rights on the corporate network, but it's a powerful tool for managing access to computers, network drives, etc. Your Active Directory account may be used to manage your access to areas of your corporate Intranet, especially if the Intranet was created with Microsoft SharePoint. And it's also tied into your corporate email and calendar, Microsoft's Exchange server, which you access using Outlook.

When you're at work, you have a persona, a way of behaving, a role that you play as an employee. At work, you probably shouldn't go on a political rant, disparaging anyone who opposes your political views as stupid. That kind of behavior can be disruptive to a productive workplace, so you should save that behavior for outside of work.

Likewise, anything you don't want your employer to know, you should not send through corporate email. Some IT departments track the websites you visit, often even blocking access to sites they believe are inappropriate for employees to access. I've had coworker who got fired for watching porn at work. Well, that, and racking up a huge 900-number bill on his company cell phone.

My creepy Big Brother moment with Google came this week. My wife showed me an email she got from Google+. It included a montage of videos and photos that have been automatically uploading to her Google+ account from her Android phone. It's like a scene from a crime show when the detective stumbles on the stalker/murderer's secret wall-collage showing photos of the victim. Please rate the Google+ Stalker App in the Play Store. Yay!


So, Google+ is primarily for information you want to share with the world. Sure, you can set who you want to share your comments with, but it's not hard to accidently share with the wrong circles or with everyone. It's just as easy to make this mistake in Facebook. A friend of mine recently set FB to share posts only with himself for a week. I've made that mistake before, too.

To avoid accidently posting to the wrong audience, I use FB for content I want to share with friends and family, so I don't have to change the settings, which might cause accidental over-sharing. Google+, which is designed for plugging into other services that I want to use

Google may find it's subject to the Microsoft curse. By excelling at serving its business clients, Microsoft has lost a lot of consumer market share, where Apple and Google have become more dominant. Microsoft's Xbox is probably the most notable exception, but it does not integrate with Microsoft's enterprise products.

To avoid the curse, Google has to figure out how to do what most people do every day, intuitively change rolls based on context. They also need to become a bastion of personal privacy, and they've taken some serious hits on this. Their latest Google+ email campaign is not helping.

Why SF Turned Dark & Engineering Wimped Out

Neal Stephenson, thought provoking as always, speaks at the Association for Science and Technology Centers. Here are my main takeaways:



Why has science fiction shifted from optimistic, idealistic stories from 50 years ago, to dark, dystopian stories that dominate the genre today? The shift seems to have occurred in the late 70's with Star Wars (still idealistic, but a gritty and broken-down futuristic world) and Alien (an industrialized, militaristic world). But I think this reflects the cultural change of the 60's. In the 50's there was a stronger emphasis on ideal norms. The cultural revolution of the 60's exposed a lot of the pretense.

The pretense didn't go away, but a layer of pretense was lifted away, and contemporary society is a little more honest about the real norms. In fact, we've become quite jaded, especially when you look at politics. Part of this might also be blamed on Watergate and cameras bringing the horrors of the Vietnam war into the public awareness.

But, Stephenson points out, the "built" environment has only changed superficially since the 70's, compared to the changes between 1900 & 1970's.

The helpfulness of SF to engineering comes from the shared understanding that the engineering team has through the SF that they all have read. This saves time and resources in communicating the vision, because the SF writer has already shared the vision, or some portion of it, some version of it, and the engineers are all on the same page.

The Hieroglyph anthology was designed to use near-future technology to write about tech that might be attainable within the lifetime of an engineering student today.

Why isn't society taking on big projects in the physical world like we used to? Stephenson believes the financial world is what is holding us back, and a modern aversion to risk and trying new things, and our leaders.

I'm not sure I buy this aversion to risk theory. American society, in particular, has become much more dependent, and accepting of, debt as a way of life. There is a vocal movement opposing public debt, but the common use of debt is far greater today than it was prior to the late 70's (when American Express and others started offering charge cards and credit cards).

I think the lack of big engineering projects has more to do with the partisanship of contemporary politics. Stephenson does say he thinks that it has to do with leadership today, and perhaps this is what he's referring to. Taking a political stance on a major engineering project can be politically risky, and the finances of the project can be used to illustrate that risk. However, George W. Bush tried to push for a mission to Mars, with a Moon Station as an interim step. However, this didn't really catch on. Again, this may boil down to partisanship, and also to Americans' suspicion of government, which grew out of the 60's cultural changes, the Vietnam War, and Watergate.

11 North American Nations?

No, this is not the premise of a new YA Dystopian novel. It's a theory about the dominant cultures in the US and North America. This article in Tufts Magazine by Colin Woodard presents a more granular look at North American cultures, from the county level instead of the state level, looking at attitudes toward violence. He comes up with 11 nations based on historic settlement patterns (I like the way he names these groups):

• Yankeedom
• New Netherland
• The Midlands
• Tidewater
• Greater Appalachia
• Deep South
• El Norte
• The Left Coast
• The Far West
• New France
• First Nation

I think his simple-majority approach to grouping the counties is a bit of a problem. How different would this map look if he left counties white when there was less than an 80% dominance in the trends he is studying?

I would also like to see what happened to the map if he counted suicides along with murders. Recent articles on suicide rates between various US populations has suggested that some homicides are in fact suicidal reckless behavior. It's hard to tease out the "suicide by by homicide" behavior, but adding the suicides in with the homicides might cancel out this effect.

It's an interesting paradigm that bears further investigation. Something to think about in upcoming elections.