US Election 2008 - Sincerity versus Authenticity

(Where is my copy of Lionel Trilling's book? I thought I had one somewhere. Did I lend it to someone? Oh well, never mind, it'll turn up.)

I was just reading David Foster Wallace's account (in a book called "Consider the Lobster") of John McCain's 2000 campaign for the Republican nomination (against an opponent then referred to as "The Shrub"). Wallace (then writing for Rolling Stone) was far from being a supporter of McCain, but he was impressed by his personal qualities. It's difficult not to be impressed by McCain's biography - whether as a fantastic example of courage and fortitude or as a brilliant example of personal myth, or perhaps both.

So here's a thought. In the upcoming presidential election, Obama represents Sincerity while McCain represents Authenticity. Different kinds of truth.

A minority of voters might vote for McCain and Palin because they share their opinions and beliefs, but most Americans don't. The only reason McCain and Palin have the remotest chance of winning the election is because sackloads of American votes will be cast for who the candidates are, not for what they stand for. Megan Garber (Columbia Journalism Review) calls this the Authenticity Trap - " the West Wing logic of governance: that truth-to-self will somehow lead a president to effective leadership".

In contrast, people will mostly not vote for Obama because of who he is - a smooth Afro-American lawyer from Chicago with a foreign name - but because of what he (so eloquently) stands for. Adam Kirsch (New York Sun) finds Obama's book more authentic than Hillary Clinton's - but come on, how many American votes are going to be based on reading? (People didn't vote for Churchill because they'd read his books either.)

Perhaps more than any election in recent memory, this is the battle of the Enlightenment. The man who speaks from the heart for progress, hope and the American Dream against the man who was captured by the VietCong and will not tell a lie. George Lakoff (Huffington Post) thinks the Enlightenment frame isn't working so well for Obama these days, and wants the Obama campaign to stop reinforcing the Maverick frame for McCain.

Steven Shaviro has a rather different take on this. In More Electoral Ruminations, he contrasts Democrat hypocrisy with Republican cynicism, and avers that "It is not stupid to vote for McCain/Palin; rather, it is evil. Republicans are intrinsically, and necessarily, morally depraved."

Some of Shaviro's readers were shocked by this abrupt jump from the political discourse to the moral/ethical, so he tried to justify his position with a Note on Evil, claiming that Obama is the true follower of Kant, and resurfacing his argument (originally posted in 2004 - Nothing) that Kant's concept of radical evil applied exclusively to the Republicans.

For a much more coherent and compelling argument about the relationship between hypocrisy and cynicism, see David Runciman's new book on Political Hypocrisy. Runciman also finds for Obama, whom he compares with Lincoln, and quotes approvingly Obama's view that "It is only the politician who is able to speak his mind freely who knows when to compromise".

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For a systems thinking view of the US election, see the POSIWID blog.

Identity Differentiation

Kim Cameron asks

"if there is some blood alcohol level after which informed consent no longer applies?"

According to an informal view of identity, there is some blood alcohol level at which you are no longer the same person. Can a sober person repudiate the past or future actions of his drunk alterego? Or vice versa?

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I thought this would be a good opportunity to republish some of my earlier notes on Security and Identity and Signatures.

It is not unusual for decisions of trust to make a distinction between different identities of the same person. Let's say I have a friend called John. JOHN-SOBER and JOHN-DRUNK are two different identities, with recognizably different patterns of behaviour and risk. I am happy to lend my car keys to JOHN-SOBER, but not to JOHN-DRUNK.

If a person has a gun to his head, or his children are held hostage, his behaviour is likely to be uncharacteristic. ("You are not yourself today.") Signatures and voice patterns change under stressful conditions, including duress and torture. If this uncharacteristic behaviour is detected at a security checkpoint, then it might be appropriate to hinder a person's entry, until the identity difference is resolved.

This is about a difference in identity, not just a difference in behaviour. I am not refusing John my car keys because of his slurred speech; I am refusing them because he is drunk It may be his slurred speech that alerts me to the fact that he is drunk; but if he convinces me that his slurred speech on this occasion is a result of a visit to the dentist, I may let him have the car keys. Conversely, if he learns to speak normally even when drunk, I shall just have to find a different way to determine when he is drunk and when sober.

After his attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament, Guy Fawkes was taken to the Tower of London and tortured to extract a confession. His signature - an important token of identity - degenerated under torture, and on his confession it is barely legible. There are serious questions about the validity and authenticity of confessions extracted under torture. The Guy Fawkes example indicates that the identity of the person signing the confession may be brutally transformed by torture, or perhaps even destroyed. We also know that identity and character may be tranformed by brainwashing - which we may sometimes regard as just another more subtle form of violence. In other contexts, identity may be altered by advertising or other modes of influence.

And can Hogwarts parents trust Professor Lupin with the care of their children? Not when there's a full moon. Remus Lupin has two identities - man and werwolf. As man, he is an excellent teacher. As werwolf he is a danger to himself and others. However, the werwolf identity manifests itself only at the full moon; at other times Lupin is perfectly safe. [Hogwarts Security]

Can "user-centric" identity deal with these cases? How does "user-centric" identity deal with context-dependent identity?

Technorati Tags: identity trust

Trust and Notification

Authentic trust implies openness. When conditions change (especially when adverse events occur) we may reasonably expect to be notified.

Here are some examples where a first-order trust issue (failure to maintain an expected state) is compounded by a second-order trust issue (failure to notify affected parties).

Identity Theft

Many examples have emerged recently in which personal data has been abused. One of the most notorious was ChoicePoint.

Some have argued that ChoicePoint cannot be accused of betraying the trust of the data subjects, because they had no direct contract or business relationship with these subjects in the first place. However, there seems to be a strong argument for transitive betrayal.

The secondary issue here is that of notification. Should data subjects be notified when their identity has been compromised or stolen? ChoicePoint received a lot of criticism about their notification policy as well.

Split Capital Investment

Chris Flitwick, who was at the centre of the split capital scam, has argued that the split caps were originally low risk, and that it was the investment practices of the fund managers that turned them into high risk. (I have described this elsewhere as an example of Bezzle.)

Such a radical change in investment practices itself might be regarded as a breach of trust, since it compromised the implicit proposition which many investors thought they had accepted. Some investors have argued that the investment companies have a duty of trust to maintain the original risk profile and bear the difference.

But in any case, if events and changing management practices turn a low risk into a high risk, surely there is a duty of trust to notify all stakeholders that the risk profile has changed and give them an opportuity to reconsider their investment/involvement.

Good Examples

In contrast to these examples, they are many companies that have been very prompt and effective at communicating with customers and other stakeholders. And this is a great way to build trust, because it shows two things. Firstly that you care about the people who trust you; and secondly that you understand the situation well enough to appreciate the possible impact on these people. This is a great basis for a trustworthy organization.

Instore Bakery

John asks: When is an in-store bakery like a life-support machine?

This is a great example. Many large supermarkets have inauthentic bakeries at the back, with the following features.

• They are always situated at the back of the store, where they produce the smell of baking bread. The air circulation is deliberately designed to send this smell to the front of the store. Shoppers are thus attracted to the back of the store, buying more stuff on the way. (You don't get quite the same smell in a real bakery, which prompts me to think that the supermarket smell may be chemically modified or enhanced.)
• The machinery is simple to use and highly automated, with preprocessed ingredients, to avoid reliance on skilled bakers.
  
• Bread is commoditized. Shoppers expect a complete range of breads, plain or fancy, white or brown, finest, organic, free trade, nut-free, wheat-free, kosher, diabetic, you name it.

When John first spoke to the baker in his local supermarket, the baker didn't know one or two things.

1. What were John's exact requirements.
2. What was the exact content of the oven.
   

As a result, the baker gave a true but unhelpful answer, and John was given false hopes of organic white bread. The store achieved its tactical objectives (John went to the back of the store twice) but what of its strategic objectives?

In the UK and elsewhere, the large supermarkets are taking an ever-larger share of the food market, and are invading many other retail domains. Doubtless bread is a life-support system - symbolically important as well as real - and the supermarkets would love us to visit them not just every week but every day, to satisfy our demand for "daily bread". Unconsciously programmed by the bakery smells we increasingly associate with a supermarket visit, we may start to think of the supermarket as a life-support system as well. This is a dangerous belief - because if we stop supporting the small shopkeeper, the belief may become true. To the extent that John has embedded the supermarket system into his life-support system, it has become his chosen technology for embreading his life.

John, you have three authentic responses to this situation.

• Eat wholemeal bread. (It's better for you, anyway.)
  
• Go to a real bakery.
• Bake your own bread.

In Scimitar, we could draw a stakeholder map showing the power (low), proximity (high) and interest (questionable) of the baker, both in relation to the customer (tactics) and in relation to the company (strategy). Bread is a small purchase for most of us, but the same technique helps us to think about questions of trust in very large procurement situations.

Frugal Use of Trust

We live in a world in which authentic trust is in short supply.

(Of course, we often trust absurdly in all sorts of political theories and one-sided narratives, technological nostrums and fancies - such as ID cards.)

How are we to engage responsibly in this world, where every engagement demands unreasonable levels of trust?

The frugal approach is to be careful not to waste trust, don't use trust for frivolous purposes, avoid polluting trust.

Beware of strategies that only work because the Dear Leader has oodles of Trustworthy characteristics. (Such strategies are as fragile as the trust on which they depend.)