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The Gangrene Effect

“Community connectedness is not just about warm fuzzy tales of civic triumph. In measurable and well-documented ways, social capital makes an enormous difference in our lives. […] social capital makes us smarter, healthier, safer, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable democracy.”

—Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone  (2000)

Imagine this: You look down at your left forearm. There’s a small patch of what looks like dirt. You go to wipe it off, but instead of coming clean, the skin begins to bleed—not a lot, not painfully, but it’s clearly not normal. You try again the next day. It bleeds again. So you stop touching it. A week goes by. Then a month. Then five years. Now the red patch has expanded until your entire forearm is inflamed, bleeding—unrecognizable.

Sounds absurd, right? Why would anyone leave a minor wound to fester for years? And yet people ignore other obvious signs of dysfunction everyday. 

I see the equivalent of this in my dental practice all the time: “My gums only bleed when I floss—so I just don’t floss.” And when asked how long it’s been happening, the answer is often: “Oh, I don’t know—a few years, probably.”

Bleeding gums are the dental version of that red patch on your arm: a warning sign we normalize. We tell ourselves it’s fine. We stop poking it. We move on. 

But normalized dysfunction is still dysfunction. And bleeding gums are just one example of a much deeper human tendency to discount what we can’t easily see.

It’s why we ignore the quiet decay of underfunded schools in low-income neighborhoods. It’s why people sleeping in doorways become invisible after enough commutes. It’s how overdoses become statistics.

There’s a more dangerous form of collective denial hiding beneath our social systems. Around the world, governments routinely neglect individuals deemed too broken, too complex, or too costly to help. We label them “unrehabbable” or “noncompliant.” We subtly justify abandoning them—socially, economically, even medically. 

In political science, there’s a term called “utilitarian distributive justice.” It suggests that government resources should be distributed to maximize society’s overall utility. In fact, it suggests there’s an ethical imperative for such efficiency—an appealing idea when viewed through a cost-benefit lens.

But somewhere along the way, that  principle was swallowed whole by market logic. We stopped asking whether society was healthy and started asking whether it was efficient. 

We began rationing compassion.

Writing off marginalized populations to “optimize” the majority is like ignoring a gangrenous toe because the rest of the body is functioning. But the body doesn’t work that way. And neither does a society.

This is what I call the Gangrene Effect of public policy: the idea that certain people or problems are too small, too far gone, or too expensive to treat. It’s what happens when we pretend the damage won’t spread. 

But gangrene always spreads. What could have been saved with early intervention turns into a full-blown crisis—for the whole body.

Your healthy muscles can’t run a marathon if your lungs are suffocating. You can’t cure cancer or raise children if your appendix has burst. You can’t innovate when you’re hemorrhaging from a wound that everyone pretends isn’t there.

The body acts as a cohesive whole first, and a collection of organ systems second. Society must do the same.

Of course, critics will say, “There’s no such thing as ‘unlimited resources.’ Every body still needs food. It needs rest. It needs to keep moving enough to survive while it heals.” And they’re not wrong. 

Priorities matter. But ignoring the damage doesn’t preserve the system—it quietly undermines it.

This isn’t just a policy failure. It’s a psychological blind spot.

Human psychology struggles to acknowledge what it cannot easily see. No one ignores a festering, bleeding forearm in front of them. But it’s easy to dismiss the “occasional” bleeding gums. And even easier—almost expected—to ignore society’s “gangrenous toe.”

Out of sight, out of mind.

But invisible damage is still real damage—seen or unseen, it’s still there. We rationalize dysfunction until it becomes “normal”, until the red, swollen patch has taken over the whole arm—the whole society.

And yes, this entire metaphor rests on a deeper belief: that all of the body — all lives in society — are of equal worth, equal importance, equal necessity. That’s not always easy to accept. But the moment we start ranking whose pain deserves help, we trade society’s health for hierarchy. And hierarchy is not health.

So the next time you read a budget or hear someone dismissed as a “lost cause” or a program cut because it’s “not cost-effective,”

Pause.

Ask: “What would happen if this were a limb on my own body? What if it were my own child? My neighbor? What if it were me?”

And when you hear someone talk about “pulling your weight,” ask yourself: “Which part of the body is choosing to ignore the infection? Which part has the power to act—but doesn’t? Who’s benefitting here? What is this really about?”

This isn’t just about pity. It’s about participation.

People stuck in cycles of poverty, addiction, and violence don’t need our judgment—they need early intervention, investment, and connection. They don’t need to be “fixed” so they can be “productive.” They need to be valued because they’re human. They are part of our body. Part of our community. And we all suffer when they are left to rot.

Gangrene doesn’t stop when we ignore it. It spreads—until there’s nothing left.

“Well, once you have the premise that every human life is of equal value — I mean, that directs a lot of what you do — both your money and your efforts, and the people you attract, and all sorts of things involved in that.”

— Warren Buffett, Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates, Part 2 (2019)

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Permanent Stopgaps

“Any child in Holland will shudder at the thought of a leak in the dyke! The boy understood the danger at a glance […] Quick as a flash, he saw his duty. […] His chubby little finger was thrust in, almost before he knew it. The flowing was stopped ! […] This was all very well at first, but […] Our little hero began to tremble with cold and dread. […] If he drew away that tiny finger, the angry waters, grown angrier still, would rush forth, and never stop until they had swept over the town. […] He was not certain now that he could draw his finger away, even if he wished to.”

—Mary Mapes Dodge, “Lesson 62. — The Hero of Haarlem,”

Hans Brinker, Or, The Silver Skates (1866)

Paris was buzzing with excitement. People from all over the world began to flock to the French capital for what would become the fourth of eight grand events in the city. It was 1889, and as the crowds looked up from the World’s Fair entrance on the Champs de Mars, they saw a peculiar structure. The iron-lattice tower was unlike anything people had seen before. Fortunately for many of the city’s disgruntled residence, the eyesore was planned to be temporary.

Exactly one hundred years later in 1989, long after the Eiffel Tower had become a permanent Parisian icon and one of the world’s most visited monuments, an American composer was finishing a piece of throwaway music. It was whimsical score, not to be taken seriously, written for a television show that probably wouldn’t last more than three episodes. Yet over thirty years later, Danny Elfman’s song lives on as one of the most recognizable tunes in popular culture. The theme song of The Simpsons, alongside the longest running sitcom in history, has outlasted all expectations. 

Anything can be a stopgap measure—rules, music, purchases, construction, verbal ticks, furniture placement, adaptations—anything. It’s a matter of intention (to be temporary, to fill a need until a long-term solution is found). And to the dismay of designers everywhere, our world is mostly made of stopgaps; it is not designed (nor is it feasible to be).* There are several reasons for this. 

One obvious but important point is that real-time decisions can rarely be made with design principles in mind. It takes a concerted effort to analyze a problem, consider the alternatives, and implement a creative solution. There are simply too many decisions (often unconscious) to regularly employ the design process. 

Also, “good enough for now” is often good enough for later. Stopgaps that work last. The economy works, although not always smoothly. Organizational and biological adaptations work. But they aren’t always elegant. The sheer volume of temporary measures creates a high probability for at least some of them to work as well as (if not better than) designed solutions. 

Another reason stopgaps persist is that it often takes less effort to maintain the status quo than to revise or reverse it. Once a decision is made, momentum takes over. It’s a case of path dependence meeting path of least resistance. This is especially true in Law, a field that prides itself on rigorous methodology and intention, which is still riddled with legal anachronisms (outdated laws that persist despite being irrelevant or in desperate need of revision).† 

When faced with an imperfect and often inept world, I’m comforted with this thought: Our world is a patchwork of stopgaps, and, considering, it works surprisingly well. The elegance of our world is that it works at all, despite being filled with inelegant solutions. But that’s not to say everyone gets a free pass. Be careful what you nonchalantly do; it might just work.

* That is to say, most solutions are intended to be temporary with those that work outlasting those that don’t. Philosophically, however, when one considers a long enough time horizon, everything is a stopgap measure, as “nothing lasts forever” (although, one could argue that intention may disqualify that conclusion depending on the definition’s semantics).

† Admittedly, it’s a stretch to claim that legal anachronisms are an example of stopgaps, since laws are typically passed with specific intention. Instead, the point here is to highlight the power of momentum, which often carries measures well beyond their intended purpose.

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The Real Ideal

“The best world we can create in this way, the best world possible, is not the best world.”

—John Lachs, “Stoic Pragmatism” (2005)

Idealism is a heuristic—a mental shortcut that helps simplify the world.* It is favored by the young and naive, not as intellectual laziness, but as a sort of training wheels or stepping stone to the complexities of real life. Idealism is useful when learning, as medical students must learn physiology before studying pathophysiology or one must learn to walk before she runs. Some may never learn. And that’s okay, because idealism is also a great driver of improving the world, to strive toward a better society, an ideal one. Realists and idealists need one another.

* The use of “idealism” here is in the narrow sense of the word, referring to the social ideals found on all sides of our current political divide.

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John Lachs. “Stoic Pragmatism.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19, No. 2: 95-106 (2005). (Source)

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If We Were Like Clouds

Do clouds have bad days? Do you think a cloud ever wakes up, bursting at the seams, downpour-ready, when a sudden weather front prevents it? Are clear blue skies a cloud tragedy or a much needed respite? Do they have things they need to get done? Do they have deadlines?

Created through the (very official sounding) process of adiabatic cooling, clouds form from a speck of dust.1 As they grow they can become tiny wisps of cotton-candy or large torturous storms. They can bring peaceful shade or apocalyptic destruction. They are infinite in potential shape, size, and formation yet can be placed into a few broad categories.2 Whether insulating or reflecting, heating or cooling, shading or pouring, the life of a cloud is defined by the unique conditions of its birth and the interaction with its immediate surroundings. Sound familiar?

We humans share a lot with our ‘inanimate’ cousins (who are as alive and connected as any of us). Like clouds, we each play a role as one part of a greater whole. And like clouds, we play this role perfectly every minute of every day. The difference is our inward analysis and perception of how things are going. It’s the illusion of “progress” that makes us feel like we’re on the “wrong path,” “behind,” or “failing.” It is our judgement of the situation, not the situation itself, which causes dissatisfaction. Our arbitrary timelines, deadlines, and goals are part of our motivation machinery, but they do not define our purpose (which often goes hidden or unnoticed, like clouds unaware of the vital roles they play).

True, clouds have a distinct advantage in accepting their existence as is—accepting life with a stoicism afforded only by the most inanimate of nature’s living body. But we can still learn a lot from clouds, created and destroyed in harmonious balance with the rest of nature. Are we really any different?

Related essay: “If We Were Like Trees” (2017)

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  1. “The Importance of Understanding Clouds,” NASA Fact Sheets, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, http://www.nasa.gov, 2005. (Source)
  2. Jin-Yi Yu, “Chapter 6: Cloud Development and Forms,” Microsoft Power Point. Earth System Science 5: University of California, Irvine. (Source)
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Humanity’s Kitchen

Why does incapacitating mental illness exist? Why would nature consistently produce people born with debilitating health problems? Is nature so cruel and unfair that it curses some people while blessing others? Perhaps. But perhaps there’s an alternative interpretation.

We humans are made up of a collection of traits.* Contrary to early scientific thought, we now know that these traits are rarely useful or dysfunctional on their own. When things go wrong, it’s less about dysfunctional traits and more about dysfunctional combinations. A useful analogy is to think of human characteristics as ingredients in a kitchen. Some combinations taste foul and others sublime; some are subtle, and others can easily overpower. And we humans are the final dishes.

The trouble with this model is that at Bistro Homo Sapien the menu is enormous. Humanity’s kitchen must stock such an immense array of ingredients that inevitably there are going to be some unpleasant combinations.

Take for example people who have difficulty filtering out the mundane elements of their surroundings (latent inhibition). These people struggle to block out irrelevant details, and as you might imagine, this can be hugely problematic. In fact, this dysfunction is associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia—but not always.

For some people, a difficulty to filter combines with another trait—high IQ—to produce a high-functioning creativity. Rather than being overwhelmed by extraneous inputs, these creatives can channel their access to additional information in positive ways. Dysfunction, then, is a matter of compatibility. (Oversimplifying: Low Latent Inhibition × Low IQ = Incompatible Schizophrenia; Low Latent Inhibition × High IQ = Compatible Creativity)

So perhaps human biology is unfair. Although, it may be helpful to remember that, “Nature optimizes for the whole, not for the individual.”2 The mechanism that allows some trait combinations to flourish requires others to falter. In this light, even debilitating mental illness can be seen as a positive—an example of the rich, robust, and beautiful diversity of our species.

* “Traits” is used here as a general, catch-all for observable human characteristics. A person could be described as “naturally shy,” for example. In a more scientific description, we could use phenotype; however, this genetic term often fails to reflect the combination of life-experience, genetic predisposition, and environmental factors that combine to create what most of us colloquially refer to as human traits.

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  1. Carson, S.H., et al., 2003. “Decreased latent inhibition is associated with increased creative achievement in high-functioning individuals.” Journal of personality and social psychology, 85(3), 2003. (Source)
  2. Ray, Dalio, Principles: Life and Work. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017. (Book)
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Art (with a capital A)

fART

In some ways “art is dead” in the sense that Art (with a capital A) is about celebrity—a singular Artist who paints on a canvas and creates a masterpiece. Van Gogh, Picasso, Mondrian, Da Vinci—they had something valid to share with the world, but so do countless other individuals of the past, present, and future.

We no longer live in a time of the lone genius tinkering away, hoping to create a masterpiece. The world has become too complex for meaningful work to be done in total isolation. Consider the computer animation company, Pixar, for example. Pixar is arguably one of the greatest mixed media “artists” of our time—a multiplier of many talented people working together to tell expressive stories. There is no amount of “creative genius” that can out-master that level of collaboration. And in this way, the Artist-as-sacrosanct mentality of the art world is perhaps irrelevant to modern life.

Individuals will always create. There is something very human about making and expressing what words cannot express. But the “Art World” as it stands today—the network of museums, auction houses, art schools, periodicals, and collectors—seems to be stodgy and outdated. It is yet another industry absorbed into the umbrella of “investing.”

As the internationally recognized street artist, Banksy, puts it:

Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions and buy records by the billions. ‘We the people’ affect the making and the quality of most of our culture, but not our art.

The art we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit, and decide the success of art. Only a few hundred people in the world have any real say. When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.

Perhaps Art is the ultimate luxury—the final, superfluous status symbol of privilege. But then again, maybe I’m wrong; after all, it’s far easier to dismiss art completely than to recognize its nuance and complexity.

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art (with a lowercase ‘a’)

When you step back and look at it, art is simply a way of communicating. We are all trying to communicate something—who we are, what we see, how we think. We each have much more going on in our heads than we are capable of expressing. So we write stories, play music, dance, paint, act, or any number of creative pursuits. We try to communicate ourselves, our understanding of the world, our experiences—all the things that seem impossible to share with someone in casual conversation.

Children make art. Adults too. Professionals, amateurs, even “uncreatives” can make art. Art is not a mystery. It’s people sharing with one another—communicating (or at least trying to). And that’s what makes it is so valuable. Unfortunately, art is not always “Art.”

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Banksy. Wall and Piece. Mainaschaff: Publikat, 2005. (Amazon).

Catmull, Ed, and Amy Wallace. Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. New York: Random House, 2014. (Amazon)

Conover, Adam. “Adam Ruins Fine Art.” Adam Ruins Everything. 08 August 2017. (Link)

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Night People

let me sleep plzzzDear “Night Person,”

Your decision to start working on that nagging project late at night or your sudden interest down an obscure internet rabbit hole at 2 A.M. is not an innate proclivity. It’s not some natural predisposition that’s outside of your control. It’s your brain being selfish. It’s a mind unwilling to give up control to being unconscious—a tired toddler trying to stay engaged for as long as it can before falling asleep. It’s a form of mental FOMO (‘fear of missing out’). Recognize it. Acknowledge it. Go to bed.

Yours truly,

Sleepy

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A Lotto’ Hope

burn money burn

[T]he difference between wishing and deciding is important.

—Scott Adams, How to Fail At Almost Everything (2013)

There are different kinds of hope. There’s the empowered kind—the kind that Martin Luther King Jr. championed. Empowered hope is what allows people to face improbable odds and still carry on, knowing that what they are hopeful for is worth the fight. Empowered hope encourages us to do better and to be better. It’s what drives us forward. And then there’s disempowered hope—wishful thinking. This is the hope that buying a lottery ticket will make you a millionaire—all the rewards with none of the effort.

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Hiding

hiding.jpgI’m hiding. Lots of people are. I write in my journals, draw in my notebooks, make notes on my phone as I walk to work. It’s a prolific exercise amounting to… well… nothing. I rarely share my work or discuss my ideas. Even my wife, the person who is closest to me, is exposed to only the tip of the iceberg. And why is this—why do we hide from people?

People intuitively understand that there is a common fear to express oneself, to be oneself. It’s a fear of what others might think or how we’ll be perceived or maybe a product of our own self-criticism—I don’t know what it is exactly. But there is a barrier for many of us. We just don’t want to give too much away. It feels safer to put on the mask and keep the real stuff out of sight.

Yet when we get brave and open up—those rare instances—the results can be surprising. Sharing can trigger others to share, and they often confirm our own experience. We hear about other people facing the same challenges that we face. We learn that we’re not alone in thinking crazy thoughts, or perhaps we are, but there are valid alternatives that would never have occurred to us. No matter how “good” we think we are, when we share, we allow other people to do the same.

There will always be better—better writers, better businesspeople, better artists, better communicators, better whatever. But so what? If you’re already doing the activity, then you might as well share it. I might as well share it. It’s time to stop hiding.

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Merry Christmas! (from the Southern Hemisphere)

Santa Hammock

It’s warm here in New Zealand—a Christmas experience I’m certainly not accustomed. Growing up in the American Heartland, we often enjoyed a traditional white Christmas—chill in the air, snowmen on the front lawn, festive decorations with vibrant light displays. Now that we’ve moved to the other side of the world, it doesn’t really feel like Christmas. But I can’t complain.

Warm weather in December has it’s benefits (outdoor barbecues, swimming at the beach, and going on hiking trips, to name a few).  That being said, living in a different country can be a mind-bending experience. Every day is Opposite Day.

There are the more obvious differences between the United States and New Zealand: The seasons are reversed so summer is winter, spring is autumn, and so on; the people drive on the left side of the road rather than the right; they speak English (or what seems to be English) with an accent; and the timezone change means it’s tomorrow, today. But there are also some less obvious distinctions.

In New Zealand, light switches flick up and down, but down is “on” and up is “off.” The moon’s surface has craters, but there’s no illusion of a man’s face from this angle. Appetizers are called entrees, and entrees are called mains. Circumcision for baby boys is the exception not the rule. Pick up a jar of “mayonnaise” from the supermarket and you might find a sweet, gloopy sauce made without eggs. And when comparing political parties to the U.S., New Zealand conservatives are liberal, and their liberals are, well, even more liberal.

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It’s a world of small differences—differences that add up to create a largely different experience. This holiday season, as families celebrate Christmas across the globe, they do so in different ways. We may agree on the name for this season, but the details can get a bit a hazy.

Does Santa get milk and cookies or biscuits and bourbon? Is it Santa, Saint Nicholas, or actually an old witch named Befana? Real tree, synthetic tree, or no tree at all? Stockings or shoes? Christmas ham, lamb, or deep-fried caterpillar?

Whether celebrating at home, traveling to visit friends and family, or moving halfway around the world, I hope you enjoy what makes your Christmas different—what makes it special to you. Happy Holidays!

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