Outcomes
What do we want the government to do for us?
This is where people tend to get lost in the weeds.
We talk endlessly about policies, but we rarely talk about : What do we want the end result to be?
This is such a common pattern for humans. As a CEO I see it with my team all the time. People want to jump straight to action. “How about we do this?” “I think we should do that!” It’s tempting. We want to start doing something.
I always take a step back and ask the higher level questions: What are we trying to achieve? What does success look like? What problem are we trying to solve?
This was my big realization from my changing political leanings: My desired outcomes didn’t change. Only my beliefs about the best way to get there.
That means we might be able to unite a big enough chunk of the population if we focused on outcomes instead of policies.
The Five Whys
You may have heard of “the five why's. It’s a tool for getting at what really matters.
It goes like this:
You ask people what they want.
And whatever they answer, you ask “why?”
No matter what they answer next, you again ask “why?”
And you continue to do this five times. Hence five whys.
How come this works?
Because eventually, they’ll stumble on what really matters to them.
It’s not that they didn’t want to tell you the first time. It’s that they didn't know!
We generally don’t know why we want the things we want in life. That all lives just below the level of our conscious mind.
But it’s close enough to the surface that when we ask ourselves the question with genuine curiosity and wonder, the answer will reveal itself. Maybe not right away. But give it a few minutes or a few weeks, and it will.
Which is also why it’s important that when you ask these questions, you allow time to wonder. If you answer too quickly, nothing new is revealed. Keep digging. It’s uncomfortable. Stay with it.
What you’ll find is that many of the things we think we want from politics boil down to personal things like “I want my dad’s love” or “I want to not feel lonely” or “I want to feel like I’m enough” or “I want to feel seen and understood” or “I want to feel safe.”
Alas, these are not things the government can give you. I wish it were.
In fact, it’s not something anyone can give you.
Loving you is your job.
Seeing and understanding you is your job.
Deciding that you’re good enough is your job.
Dealing with life’s inherent uncertainty is your job.
Keeping you company is your job.
We’re all fundamentally alone when we live from our personality. You’re the only one who was there when you were born and will be there when you die.
No one can do any of this for you.
But that doesn’t stop us from hoping someone will.
The Umbilical Cord
I heard a quote years ago that stuck with me: “Most people walk around the world with their umbilical cord in hand, looking for somewhere to plug it in.”
It’s a funny image. It’s also pretty accurate.
We look to parents, spouses, bosses, employers, governments, institutions, therapists, coaches, gurus, mentors, even our own children, for that place that we can plug in our umbilical cord and abdicate responsibility for our own life.
Realizing that your life is your responsibility and no-one can do it for you is frightening at first.
Then you realize it’s the doorway to freedom, power, and truth.
But only after you’ve been through the pain of recognizing that all of your past failings have been on you. And all your future successes depend on you as well.
(There’s a deeper truth which we’ll get to, but at the 3D level, this is a truth for all of us to grapple with.)
What breeds compassion is this: We all do it!
With that understanding in place, practicing the five whys, what are the outcomes we want for our society and its people?
For me, it’s simple. I want …
• To create the optimal conditions for people to be happy, healthy prosperous, and safe.
• A thriving economy, and a thriving planet that can sustain life for millennia to come.
• Secure, auditable elections, and an honest media to hold everyone accountable.
• A small, honest government that does exactly what it needs to do and nothing else.
Check how well it lines up with what you want for your country and it people. Almost everyone I’ve talked to can get behind that list. It turns out that normal people don’t want people to be unhappy, sick, poor, or unsafe. They don’t want a shitty economy, they don’t want to destroy the planet, they don’t want election fraud, and they don’t want a corrupt, lying, biased press.
That is great news!
Left or right, I believe we can all come together around those. We may want to tinker with the list a bit, but it’s a good first approximation.
That means we can start to have a conversation about how to get there, the strategies.
