Character is Not for Sale: Why I Hate SUVs.

A man should give us a sense of mass.

— Emerson

When deciding whether to grant a security clearance to someone, our intelligence agencies take into account what they call the "whole person;" not merely the record of his or past behaviors, but their sum total—the sort of actor they represent.

We'd call that sum total character.

Bankers actually do call it that. Character to bankers is one of the "Five Cs," the five factors they consider when deciding whether to make a loan.

Character to a banker amounts to stability—how long you’ve lived at your current address, how long you’ve been in your current job, and how promptly you pay your bills. Bankers want to know you're steady, trustworthy, and likely to repay the loan.

Writer Tom Wolfe called character "the right stuff," an ineffable "it," a je ne sais quoi that blends combat-tested chutzpa with a self-effacing style. More than just a track-record of stability, the right stuff comprises the Hemingwayesque knack for demonstrating "grace under pressure." As astronaut Wally Schirra said of the right stuff, "it's something you can't buy."

Emerson called character the "genius by whose impulses a man is guided;" a genius, he said, as likely to rear its head in business as on the battlefield (Emerson didn't anticipate space flight).

"The face which character wears to me is self-sufficiency," the philosopher said. "A man should give us a sense of mass. Our action should rest mathematically on our substance."

Character as substance: I like that definition. I see it on quiet display every day—particularly among the many businesspeople I know who are struggling to emerge whole from the pandemic. Although they don't say it, they worry as much about their employees', suppliers', and customers' futures as their own; often more so.

They know character amounts to taking one right step after another, even when the path is rocky and uncertain. 

Now that's the right stuff.

Unfortunately, too many other Americans think the right stuff is for sale and that you can buy it—in the form of an SUV.

SUVs continue to push sedans out of the American automotive market, because they make their owners feel "important" and "safe," according to consumer research conducted automakers.

That research shows these Americans are, in the researchers' words, "self-oriented" and "crime-fearing." 

In other words, selfish and paranoid.

When behind the wheel, SUV drivers, according to the research, believe, "I'm in control of the people around me." And they show it by hogging the road; driving aggressively; lane-changing recklessly; parking thoughtlessly; and eyeing you with contempt at all times.

SUVs, in turn, are designed by Detroit to feed their drivers' warped, apocalyptic fantasies. Resembling the armored cars starring in Mad Max movies, SUVs are fierce, furious and overfed weapons of brutal destruction. 

I hate SUVs; and, by extension, their cowardly, hoggish and self-important drivers. 

And I have a message for them.

Character is not for sale.

Above: Bust by John Francis Murray.

Paint Licks

 

I’m pleased to announce the release of my first e-book, Paint Licks.

Paint Licks gathers insights by 30 painters, living and dead, into the whys and hows of painting.

Download your free copy now.

Share it with a friend.

And let me know if you enjoy it.

Information Compulsion

Everything you say should be true,
but not everything true should be said.

— Voltaire

The late writer Tom Wolfe believed that everyone suffers from "information compulsion," that everyone is "dying to tell you something you don't know."

Wolfe relied on the compulsion to draw secrets out of the hundreds of people he interviewed during his career, including Ken Kesey, Chuck Yeager, John Glenn, Junior Johnson, Hugh Hefner, Phil Spector, and Leonard Bernstein.

We're taught as kids to be discreet, not to volunteer information or share "family business."

And we learn as young adults the numerous penalties attached to having loose lips, when we see peers chastised, ostracized, marginalized, demoted or fired for compulsive blabbery. 

We even take a formal oath of secrecy whenever we're forced to sign one of those sinister-sounding NDAs.

So why do we so readily cave to "information compulsion" when it comes to social media?

In the past 24 hours alone, I have learned through Facebook:

• Despite her need to, a painter I know cannot sell any of her artwork.
  
  
• Another painter I know has been "blocked" for more than a year.
  
  
• A student in a group I follow is clinically depressed.
  
  
• A publisher I know can't stop grieving over his father's death.
  
  
• An event planner I know can't find a job—or even get an interview.

I'm no Pollyanna. Like everyone else,  I too have my share of irksome troubles.

But sharing them on social media, as if it were one big recovery meeting, makes no sense to me.

Surrendering to information compulsion may reduce your anxiety, but it confers no honor upon you, and is sure to haunt you in the long run.

"The ideal man bears the accidents of life with grace and dignity," Aristotle said, "making the best of circumstances."

You want to be that man (or woman or neither).

Because dignity is non-negotiable.

No Place Like Home?

Considered a social distancing pioneer, Marcel Proust wrote all seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time in his bed.

Move over, Marcel. Americans may have you beat.

According to a new study by lead-gen company CraftJack, 45% of remote workers routinely work from a couch; 38%, in bed; and 20%, outdoors.

CraftJack asked 1,500 Americans who worked from home where in the house they did so.

While some have home offices, most Americans do not—particularly the city-dwellers.

Those unfortunate workers have been forced, since Covid-19 shut down the country in April 2021, to make do with couches, beds and chaise lounges.

Working from home under these conditions is no cakewalk, which could explain employees' poor reaction to Google's announcement yesterday (following Apple's lead) that it has postponed their return to the office to mid-October.

Keep Me Posted

Too much of nothing can make a man feel ill at ease.

— Bob Dylan

"Keep me posted."

The idiom is thought by some linguists to derive from the Old English word postis, borrowed from Latin and meaning "doorpost."

As did many ancients, the Romans believed evil spirits lurked about their doors. To ward them off, they'd nail amulets to their postes and slather them with potions—combinations of things like salt, cumin, chewed buckthorn, and monkey urine. They'd also nail a variety of "danger" and "no trespassing" signs to their doorposts, meant to deter the devils.

In the Middle Ages, wooden posts were erected in village squares, meant for the display of public notices, and postis in Middle English came to mean "to announce," as when a couple would "post banns" before their wedding. This practice is the more likely source of the modern idiom "Keep me posted." (The later-arriving expression "posting a letter" is unrelated; it derives from the French noun poste, which means "courier.")

Today, social media is our postis, the way we all—except for a few Luddites—spread and follow news.

But when is too much posting too much? When does posting become spamming?

The social media mavens at Hootsuite have the answers:

• On Instagram, you should post no more than once a day (either a feed-post or a story). Posting daily will double your following every week. Posting more frequently is spamming.

• On Facebook, you should post no more than twice a day. Posting at that frequency will quadruple your following; but posting more than that will cost you followers.
  
  
• On Twitter, you should post no more than six times a day. One-third of your posts should comprise self-promotion; one-third, stories; one-third, insights.
  
  
• On LinkedIn, you should post no more than five times a day. However, having been banned for life from LinkedIn (for opposition to gun ownership), I urge you to boycott this nest of right-wing vipers and post zero times a day. Better yet, delete your LinkedIn account.

All Hootsuite's rules of course take a back seat to the prime directive: your content should add value. Posting crap, even once, is over-posting.

Adding value—when you consider all the clutter—is a feat. 

Adding value is something. 

Adding crap is nothing.

Too much of nothing can make a man feel ill at ease.