Faith in humanity, positive regard, and cynicism

A log from my weekend of travel, Thursday through Sunday

THURSDAY

I’m at PublicUs where I’m hosting breakfast in a bit for the Vegas edition of Breakfast Industries. I got here early to write first, fueled by a coffee and sugar high thanks to the yummy pumpkin square (back for the fall!): think pumpkin pie but with a marshmallow fluff topping that I sort of love and, knowing this, the staff give me an extra dollop. I have many deadlines and am traveling this weekend, so this is going to be a more casual post—loosely, associatively strung together—like a travel log but mostly of ideas. I’m making up that this will be welcomed by all of us, including me, the writer.

Also fall in Vegas means it’s only a high of 100 degrees. I am wearing a sweatshirt! Or, well, it’s tied around my waist.

Unconditional Positive Regard

I’ve been meaning to incorporate more theories and research here, and a good place to start might be with the idea of unconditional positive regard because it is foundational to the practice of coaching. Unconditional positive regard was popularized by humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers in 1956. Surprising, right? It feels so contemporary when, in fact, it’s basically a decade older than the SWOT analysis.

Holding someone in unconditional positive regard means thinking of them positively, with genuine care, separate from their actions or behavior, regardless of what they say or do. The premise, according to Rogers, is that “all people have the internal resources required for personal growth.” Rogers theorized that most people want to be good, want to be socially constructive, even when we can’t see it. (Jeffrey Wotherspoon, who coaches in prison, spoke to this recently, as well.)

In my coaching tradition, we say that people are “naturally creative, resourceful, and whole.” This is not the same as deciding people are perfect, or infallible, or without areas of growth, but it is a strengths-based perspective, a true shift in mindset. The value is that you speak, think, and engage differently when you believe people are capable.

After breakfast, roadtripping to Flagstaff, Ariz., I took the Stockton Hill Road exit into Kingman for a bio break. Stockton Hill Road is jam-packed with trucks and lined with blue and red political signs. The Kingman Medical Center is right off the 93-S, but mostly it’s a flat, dusty strip of fast-food restaurants and drug stores. I have a routine when I pull into town, and I feel practically invisible in it. No one sees me.

Chipotle was busy with locals that Thursday afternoon. I stood in line behind two young men, one with a gun on his hip and a black t-shirt that read, “In Whores We Trust.” I’m skittish around men with guns. Instinctively, I scanned the restaurant, searching for signs of character in the seemingly peaceable patrons chatting over burrito bowls: would any of them pick a fight? I only do this when there’s a gun, which seems only to happen in Kingman. Then, I remembered what I wrote earlier about assuming positive regard and thought, “could there be circumstances in which I would hold these men in positive regard?”

We waited in line together for a long time. Neither guy made eye contact with me. Meanwhile, I studied their eyes, their bearded faces, their tattoos, and tried to imagine them as toddlers, beloved by their mothers. The one with the gun asked his buddy if he wanted to split a bag of chips. I also heard him say “please” when he requested queso on his bowl.

FRIDAY

I’m reading Meg Wheatley’s latest book Restoring Sanity, and I spent a portion of the day dwelling in her idea that sane leadership demands us to develop unshakeable confidence that people can be generous, creative, and kind. To do that, she writes, we need to be grounded in faith in humanity, not beliefs:

Faith and beliefs are completely different. Beliefs are easy to acquire—so many folks out there are eager to tell us what to believe. We believe what we are told rather than experiencing things directly. Beliefs lack staying power—they come and go, and as they waiver, so do we. If we’re motivated by beliefs, not faith, we’ll give up when people disappoint us. We may have had a few revelatory moments of witnessing people’s capacities, but these vanish with the next disappointment. We lose confidence in people and ourselves. What was I thinking? Did I ever believe this was possible?

How do you reconcile holding an unshakable confidence in human nature with the world we experience around us? Because simultaneously to reading this, while my dad, who recently had surgery, took a nap, I also read the chilling New Yorker article about the Gilbert Goonies, the street gang in Gilbert, Ariz., who attacked and killed another teenager, Preston Lord, from Queen Creek, a year ago October. The story resurfaced in my world because the local news aired a segment about the curfews for teenagers in Gilbert—“there’s a curfew for teenagers?” I asked.

I wonder if stories I’m braiding together about human nature, the inquiry of whether we are good, or bad, or getting worse, demonstrate the lack of staying power that Wheatley is speaking to—is this wavering belief? Or is the juxtaposition pulling something deeper out of me.

SATURDAY

My mom’s kitchen has a small radio that’s always tuned to NPR. As I was making breakfast, Scott Simon was interviewing jazz musician Herb Alpert about the release of his 50th album. Here’s Herb:

I had problems playing the trumpet. I started stuttering through the instrument. I couldn't get the first note outright. So I met this trumpet teacher in New York City. His name was Carmine Caruso. And he was called The Troubleshooter. I said, Carmine, what am I doing wrong? He said, let me tell you something, kid, this trumpet is just a piece of plumbing. That's all it is. It's a series of pipes, and you're the instrument. That sound comes from deep within you.

That phrase, “it’s a series of pipes, and you’re the instrument,” resonates. Perhaps this is more tied to ideas of creativity—not faith in humanity or positive regard—but all are speaking to perspective and the power of the individual.

Let me tell you something, kid, if we’re motivated by beliefs, not faith, we’ll give up when people disappoint us.

SUNDAY

If you haven’t yet, I hope you listen to Derek Thompson’s Plain English podcast featuring Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. Zaki is author of a new book, Hope for Cynics. This episode is addressing my question almost exactly—is it foolish to ground one’s self in a faith that human kind is generous, creative, and kind? Or, as Thompson posed it, if social cooperation is the foundation of human civilization and progress, why is cynicism, the assumption that most human beings are greedy, selfish, and dishonest, such a prevalent mindset?

I was rapt. I hope you listen, too. (I would transcribe the whole thing if that weren’t silly.) Zaki defines cynicism versus skepticism, delves into the roots of why people and cultures might trend toward cynical worldviews, looks at ties between the media and cynicism, and speaks to one reason why we might consider cynics smarter than average. (This is something that I worry about personally: I don’t like that readers might think of me as gullible for advocating for the potential in people.)

Here’s what Zaki says on the question of whether cynics are smarter:

If you get taken for a ride, if you get scammed, if you get duped, that's embarrassing. People can see it. But if you're cynical and you mistrust somebody who you should have trusted, that failure is invisible to you and to the people around you.

So we get this asymmetric information that makes cynics look smart, makes them look safe, makes them look wise, when in fact, they're missing out. They're failing in all sorts of ways that we just can't see. They're making all sorts of cognitive errors when they unthinkingly mistrust people, but those are hidden under the surface.

So cynicism is like a safety blanket for the individual. But what happens at the macro level, or culturally? Why does cynicism take root? For one, Zaki spoke about how we are becoming more abstract to each other, in part because we live in media ecosystems that feed us narratives that are systemically skewed toward the negative. This makes us susceptible to the mean world syndrome, or the idea that the more you consume cable news and social media, the more wrong you are about the nature of most people.

I wonder if this is related to Wheatley’s observation of beliefs versus faith: “We believe what we are told rather than experiencing things directly.” We are the instrument.