What is going through your mind when your son comes home from school rooting for the Dodgers?
Must be the media, right? All they talk about is Ohtani.
The real reason? The hometown Mariners ineptitude.
If you’re getting a little fluffy, it’s easy to blame your age, your metabolism, and Cool Ranch Doritos.
The real reason? You’re unhappy. You’re bored. And you’re eating for comfort and entertainment.
When your firm keeps losing business to the competition, you point the finger at marketing and sales.
The real reason? Your product hasn’t kept up. A simple truth that’s hard to fix.
You can blame the media, your metabolism, and marketing, but the real question you need to answer is this:
Why are you and yours so susceptible to media, metabolism, and marketing?
The Primary Risk
Alex Karp is the provocative co-founder of Palantir. He is a pro-gun, anti-woke, socialist-democrat, that practices tai-chi and cross-country skiing. That’s a lot of hyphens, so It’s hard to peg him down if you are a low rung type. I think people like Alex are cool, even if I wouldn’t have them over for dinner.
Because of the work that Palantir does with the government, Karp was asked about disinformation, propaganda, and election interference. Karp said, “The primary problem is not disinformation. The primary problem is people listen to disinformation because the primary functions of their government aren’t working. And they’re asking themselves, why doesn’t it work? You have to fix those underlying functions.”
He is talking about susceptibility. What makes people susceptible to disinformation?
John F. Kennedy said, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” But the preference from so many is to place a big orange bucket under the leak, and then curse Home Depot because they only hold five gallons.
Karp continued, “The primary risk to a society is not fake information it’s a society that’s willing to believe the fake information because they’re wondering:
Why doesn’t my school work?
Why doesn’t my border work?
Why have I been taught things in school that don’t work?
Why am I being told that poetry will pay my bills?
That is the primary risk to a society.”
Focus on root causes, not just symptoms. The power of disinformation lies in existing grievances.
Disinformation from foreign actors is top of mind, but it works inside the country as well.
How do you keep your family safe? Alarm systems, guns, a backyard bunker. Do they work? I’m sure you can find data and a salesperson to tell you they do.
Good fences make good neighbors, right?
What is the real reason communities aren’t safe? The root cause?
Education and economy. Brains in their head, food in their belly.
“Poverty,” Marcus Aurelius said, “is the mother of crime.” If you’re starving, what choice do you have? What do you have to lose?
Poverty comes in more than just its financial form. And when you’re impoverished, you are susceptible.
Root Cause
169 years ago, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
A lot of people know this quote, but they don’t know the context. What was Thoreau talking about? What evil was lurking?
He was talking about charity (the branches) and racism (the root). He was discussing the so called giving that people participate in, that does very little for the greater good, like the 10% tithing from a God fearing, church going, slave owner.
He questions the morals of those using slaves and donating the proceeds of every tenth to those less fortunate. He writes, “it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most to produce that misery which he strives in vein to relieve.”
Makes you wonder about all these big businesses and their ESG programs.
You can clear the branches, but if you don’t get the root, we’ll never make real progress.
Stephen Covey built on this idea, saying we spend too much time “hacking at the leaves of our societal and personal problems while ignoring the root causes and cures.”
When we don’t get to the root, we create a susceptibility. To disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda.
Your health is failing, and you allow yourself to believe AG1 will solve it. You are susceptible because you are impoverished, not because it’s advertised on your favorite podcast.
Your kids’ education is failing, and you allow yourself to believe book banning will solve it. You are susceptible because you are impoverished. And the banning is unnecessary, because the kids don’t read, and you don’t either.
What causes alcoholism?
“Drinking too much alcohol!!”
Sorry, that’s a symptom.
You can try to dry a drinker out, but it doesn’t work long term. That is hacking at the leaves.
What is the root of alcoholism?
Addictive personality, family history, anxiety, depression, childhood trauma, and the list goes on.
How do we treat it? Like, really treat it?
Rehabilitation, therapy, social support.
And how do we prevent alcoholism?
To do that, you need to understand who is susceptible and fix the roof before the rain comes.
A simple truth that’s hard to solve for. Orange buckets are easier.
The root of sorrow is desire.
The root of relationship problems is insecurity.
The root of anxiety is uncertainty.
These are different types of poverty, coming in different forms, and making us susceptible.
There are a thousand cures, but no antidotes.
If you want to change the fruits, you’ve got to change the roots.
If not, you’ll continue to be susceptible.
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