The Transcendental and Transforming Impact of Trust--A Personal Essay

As the years and now the decades have passed, the more I’ve come to appreciate the transcendental and transforming impact of trust.  I’ve come to appreciate that trust draws its strength in many dimensions.  I would classify them as:

• Strictly personal
• Interpersonal
• Organizational
• the “fly-wheel impact”

Trust has to start with trust in ourselves.  Some years ago, I was asked this question by a college student:  “Mr. Pepper, if all you had was a paper napkin to write on, what would be the three things you would write which you would most want your grandchildren to remember?”

I thought for less than a minute.  Here is how I responded:  

Believe in yourself; believe in your best self.

Do what you believe is right.

Love people.

I started with believing in yourself—your best self.  That’s foundational.  And there is, of course, no way that you can believe in yourself if you don’t inherently trust yourself.  Trusting yourself not in the sense of knowing it all or being all important. But trusting yourself in the confidence that your actions will mirror your deepest instincts and that you will try to do what you believe is right. Trusting that you will do your level best to fulfill what you believe are your responsibilities.  

This trust in one’s self is the foundation for self-respect —for having clarity and confidence in who one is.  It starts there.  

The next dimension I cite is the role of trust in forming strong interpersonal relationships.  There is a lot to those few words. 

I have long said that trust is the most important gift we give another person, other than our love; and without trust, love cannot endure.  

Trust conveyed to me by others has made all the difference in my life.  The greatest gift of trust I ever received was from my yet-to-be wife, Francie, more than 55 years ago.  I received that trust singularly and indelibly when she answered my request for her to marry me in May 1967 with two words:  “I will.”  I knew at that moment, nothing could go wrong.  

Decades before that, I received the gift of trust from my parents, especially my mother.  She had surrounded me with unbounded love from the first time I recognized her.  I felt that love.  But equally, perhaps even more, I felt her implicit trust that I would accomplish important things.  I didn’t know what they might be.  I didn’t think much about it.  But that trust, inchoate as it was, engendered a high level of self-expectations that drove my commitment to excel.

Self-expectations matter and other people play a big part in establishing what these self-expectations are.  They have mattered a great deal to do with what I achieved in my career.  It probably started in May 1960 as I entered the Navy.  While on board the destroyer U.S.S. Blandy, with its complement of over 300 sailors, I couldn’t believe that at only the age of 23, the captain of the ship was leaving it entirely in my hands as officer of the deck during Midnight watches.  While serving a couple of years later in the Philadelphia naval shipyard, I could hardly believe that an admiral visiting from Washington to examine three Korean War-era PT boats for possible deployment in the then-emerging action in Vietnam appointed me to lead the entire recommissioning.  

This pattern of people’s trusting me led to elevated self-expectations and a sense of responsibility which continued pretty much nonstop.

Jack Clagett, my first two-up boss at Procter & Gamble, told my then newly married wife that he felt someday everyone in the company might be working for me.  I couldn’t believe what he said. I actually thought I might be told that P&G wasn’t the right place for me.  I silently, maybe even vocally, rejected Jack’s idea but I’m sure that it registered.  The fact that I remember it 55 years later is testimony to that. 

I am not alone in citing the importance of one person’s trust in elevating the vision of what another person can achieve. Again and again, fellow P&Gers have told me the importance of another person’s trust in them to what they were able to accomplish.  Listen to how Herbert Schmitz, who led the development of P&G’s business in Eastern and Central Europe in the 1990s describes what enabled him to take the risks that led to his breakthrough results:   “I felt trust and respect from those to whom I reported.  They had confidence in me…they had fun in taking the risk with me.  I could see it in the sparkle of Wolfgang Berndt’s eyes (Herbert reported to Wolf).  It gave me oxygen.  I knew that he would forgive mistakes as they occurred.”

Trust is, of course, at its most powerful when it is authentic and spontaneous.  A personal encounter brought this home to me early in my career during a car ride that lasted no more than ten minutes.  I was Advertising Manager and had been attending a presentation by a senior creative director of one of our advertising agencies.  John Smale, then a Group Vice-President several levels above me, offered me a ride back to the office.  In the short trip, Smale asked me what I thought of the presentation.  I told him I hadn’t thought much of it.  I had found it superficial.  It turned out he felt the same way.

What I recall from this brief exchange was the obvious respect and trust Smale had for my point of view and his interest in having a real interchange with me.  

This reminds me of an encounter I had many years later at our P&G plant in Johannesburg, South Africa.  I had been touring one of our production modules with a Black Afrikaner.  It had been a good visit; the line was running well and was obviously well led.  

Walking back from the visit, just the team leader and me, I turned to him and asked how he liked working at the plant since P&G had taken it over from Richardson-Vicks a couple of years before.  He turned, looked me right in the eye and smiled and said he was loving it and everyone else was, too.  He said this with such enthusiasm I had to ask him, what accounted for the energy of his response.  He turned to me again and said very simply, “Mr. Pepper, because before P&G was running this plant and people like you were here, no one would have asked me a question like that.”  Isn’t it startling, amazing and sobering that this simple act of trusting the value of their answer can mean so much in empowering another.  

Consciously and I’m sure unconsciously, too, I’ve tried to reciprocate the life-changing benefits I’ve gained from people who conveyed their trust in me.  As I was retiring, I was deeply moved to receive a letter from Johnip Cua, one of the most outstanding General Managers I ever worked with.  He reminded me that, in 1991, when he was still a young Product Supply manager, I had observed him in a meeting and recommended to his management that he undertake a training assignment in Marketing, likely leading to General Management.  

Johnip recalled, “It took me two weeks to think through what I wanted to do, and what I thought I was capable of doing.  To be honest, I was not sure but because you placed so much trust in me, I decided to accept the challenge and the rest was history…”  And what a history it has been.  Johnip led the Philippines to record after record, year after year.  Countless men and women have grown under his leadership and, yes, under his trust.  

How, as I think back, did people convey their trust in me?  How do I believe I conveyed my trust in others?  

Perhaps most importantly, they simply listened to me, listened intentionally.

How one listens really matters.  There are all kinds of listening.  There is pretend listening; there is part-time listening, that’s listening knowing you should be listening but having your mind on something else.  There is listening with your mind focused on how you’re going to respond.  Then, there is truly intentional listening:  listening to truly understand and gain the benefit of another person’s experience, thinking and ideas.  You can’t fake how you are listening, not for long.  People will figure it out; they will see the reality and they will greatly appreciate your being deeply engaged.

Personally, I have found it easy to listen intentionally to many, many people.  Why?  Because I’ve come to see how much I have to learn from others, including many people whom I started out wondering whether I could actually learn anything from them.  People who were different than I was in their background, their ethnicity. However, the number of times I’ve discovered wisdom and fresh thoughts from someone I didn’t know to have them is beyond counting.

Beyond the simple fact of listening, people have conveyed their trust in me (and I hope I have in others) by following a deeply felt recommendation of mine even though they had a contrary point of view to begin with.  People did that for me again and again.  Sometimes it worked out; sometimes it didn’t.  But I never left such a decision without feeling empowered and having a greater sense of responsibility.

There is no surprise that the most effective leaders I have known and observed have established personal relationships founded on trust and an organization culture empowered by trust.  

No one has talked about the importance of choosing to trust others more compellingly than Ed Artzt, who preceded me as CEO of P&G.  In an unforgettable speech at Harvard Business School titled “How to be a Winning Manager,” Ed said this:  “Trust is a character trait that does not come easily to many people.  But I believe that winning managers inherently trust the judgment, competence and integrity of their subordinates, and are successful because they communicate that feeling to their people as part of the winning spirit that they ultimately create.”

“Losing managers on the other hand are often inherently distrustful of the judgment, competence or integrity of their people, and they inevitably transmit that feeling much to their own detriment and to the detriment of the enterprise.”

Ed went on to say, “Understand I’m not talking about blind, unquestioned, hands-off, let-your- people-run-wild trust.  I’m talking about developing the capacity to convey to people the trust they have earned through their efforts and their performance.”

“Remember just one thing.  Trust your people.  If you trust them, they will give it back ten-fold.”

No one embodied the spirit and actions that Ed Artzt espoused as much as John Smale, who preceded him as CEO at Procter & Gamble.  Of all the leaders whom I have known in business, John Smale stands tallest.  There are many elements to the strength of his leadership.  But perhaps more important than any other is the trust and sense of responsibility he engendered in the individuals reporting to him and the trust he infused throughout the entire organization.

Smale was very intentional in identifying individuals that he could trust through their ability, character and willingness to perform at the highest level, just as he expected that of himself.  With painstaking intent, for example, he chose Ed Artzt to drive the global expansion of Procter & Gamble’s business.  With sharp intentionality, he chose Wahib Zaki to reinvigorate P&G’s R&D operation and Harry Tecklenburg to start up P&G’s pharmaceutical business and on and on it went.  

Smale’s trust did not come lightly.  It was based on careful evaluation.  Importantly, the high expectations of others which he made clear, not in a heavy-handed or dictatorial way, carried with them a tremendous sense of empowerment combined with a high level of responsibility on the part of the individual.  That sense of responsibility was bolstered by the confidence that Smale would be supporting them all the way. I felt this again and again as I reported to Smale. 

The impact of trust goes beyond the individual relationships it empowers. It also affects, it permeates, indeed it molds, for better or worse, the entire culture of an organization.  Without strong trust, you will never have a strong culture.

Over 30 years ago, I heard one of the most meaningful presentations of my life which speaks directly to this.  The presentation was by a professor at the London Business School.  His name was Sumantra Gohshal.  Gohshal framed his just over 8-minute talk at Davos with a metaphor:  “The Smell of the Place.”  He was talking about the mysterious but all important subject of culture.  He likened the culture of an organization to air.  It’s just there.  It surrounds you, for better or worse.  

In drawing out the metaphor, “The Smell of the Place,” Gohshal contrasted two environments he was very familiar with:  the city of Calcutta, where he grew up, in summer.  Temperature nearing 100; humidity close to the same.  Try as you might, it was hard to be creative in that environment.  The environment was controlling. 

In contrast, Professor Ghoshal described the environment of the forest at Fontainebleau, where he had spent a great deal of time.  Here, surrounded by leaves budding and birds chirping, he averred it was easy to be creative; it came naturally.

He went on to make this flinching comment:  “Too many organizations are like Calcutta in the summer.  Their environment is characterized by compliance, constraint, contract and control.  That was the attitude of the management. And that made it very hard, to be creative just as the temperature and humidity in Calcutta made it hard to be creative.”

In contrast, he chose four words to describe the environment in Fontainebleau.  I’ll never forget his choice of words:

Stretch

Discipline

Support, and underpinning it all,

Trust

I was so impressed by his presentation and this metaphor that I invited him to come to Cincinnati to speak with P&G’s top leadership group.  He did.  And I dare say, most of the people there, like me, remember what he said to this very day.  And they try to apply it.

Why?  Because it’s easy to identify “The Smell of the Place” in an organization.  I picked it up as I went from P&G subsidiary to subsidiary.  I picked it up when I went from school to school in Cincinnati.  Talking this recently with my son, who is in the venture capital business, he tells me he picks up the caring “Smell of the Place” in his different start-up companies.  And not surprisingly he is more inclined to invest in the ones with a positive smell.

It is impossible to create this kind of climate and culture if people don’t trust each other to be doing the best job they can and to talk straight.  It would be impossible if they don’t trust their leaders to be calling the shots as they see them and, even if they might disagree with them on a decision, they know they are working to do the right thing for the sake of the institution.  

My son recently pointed out another benefit of trust.  He calls it the “flywheel effect” and he was hitting a key point.  

Trust within an organization is recognized, appreciated and responded to by other stakeholders.  Customers work with P&G in a different way because they trust the brands we sell and because they trust P&G people.  I found again and again that government leaders in countries we were entering accorded us respect and support because they trusted us to deliver on our promises, to live up to our principles and values, to act ethically and fairly.  I’ve been welcomed on college campuses where I’m recruiting young students by career advisors because they trust P&G to not only teach young graduates the business but work hard to advance their career development.

Yes, there are many dimensions to trust.

They start with trust in one’s self.  They characterize the best interpersonal relationships.  They frame and mold the culture of the organization.  And they constitute the basis on which an organization is respected and valued by other stakeholders.

A warning: we must never take trust for granted.  We must protect it.  We must recognize that it is vulnerable to actions which contradict our principles and values.  They have happened.  I’ve seen them.  I’ll always remember an incident at one of European countries where we discovered that its leader was offering customers free cruises in the Mediterranean for preferential merchandising treatment.  We learned this practice after had gone on for a couple of years without our knowledge. When we did learn about it, we terminated the person.  What happened next was what impacted me the most.  A number of members of the organization told me they thought we knew all along this was happening.  And they had come to think our principles and values were simply a lot of propaganda.

Sometimes a leader might undermine trust without being aware of it.  An offhand remark; an action they might not have thought enough about.  It is incumbent upon the person observing this to speak up and make that clear to him or to her.  Failure to do so is an abdication of responsibility.  

Never forget what it is that underpins our trust (or lack of trust) in other people.  It is our experience that they are saying what they mean and mean what they say; that even if we don't agree with them, we know they are trying to do the right thing, the principled thing, not the expedient or convenient thing. That is the bedrock of trust. 

Going back to where I started, trust is the most precious gift we give one another.  Trust is the most important attribute of personal relationships.  Trust is an essential element of an empowering, high-performance culture, no matter whether that is a business or an athletic team or a university or a healthcare organization.  And trust earns trust from other people who observe it and respect it and want to be associated with an organization that not only says the right thing but acts on doing it.

Timeless Advice from President Lincoln--The Importance of Respecting Others

 

President Lincoln had a deep belief in the importance of respecting other people in the quest to achieve productive outcomes.  He was an enemy of self-satisfaction and any “know it all” attitude.   

As author Jon Meacham writes, Lincoln believed that to hector or condemn another person, to tell them that they are wholly wrong, was not a path to agreement or reform but to intransigencies. 

 

“If you would win a man to your cause,” Lincoln wrote, “first convince him that you are his sincere friend.  Therein this drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to reach and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment to the justice of your cause.  On the contrary, assuming to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart and although your cause be naked truth itself, transformed with the heaviest lance…you shall no more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a  straw.”  

We so need to honor this truth today. We have to stop shouting at each other; vilifying one another. In our domestic politics. In our foreign relations. Even sometimes in our families.

The Rise and Fall of the Neo-Liberal Order

 he Rise and Fall of the Neo-Liberal Order:  America and the World in the Free Market Era

by Gary Gerstle

 

This book, in a fresh and very competent way, overviews the history of the past 100 years, 1920-2022.  It does it in less than 300 pages.  Deeply researched and fluidly written, the story reveals dimensions of this history that I found incisive and many new, despite having lived through most of it. 

 

He channels his story on the foundation of two movements as he describes them:  the New Deal, put in place on the run by FDR following the Great Depression.  It lasted through the 1960s and 1970s, brought down eventually by a combination of the Vietnam War (which split the Democratic Party), racial relations and the economy, which went into a steep decline in the 1970s.  From that sprang Neo-Liberalism, helped along tremendously by the peaceful demise of the Soviet Union and the opening up of China and the rest of the world to commerce.  Neo-Liberalism, a broad term often used in a dismissive and derogatory way today, embraced a belief in open markets, individual initiative, de-regulation of finance (elimination of Glass-Steagall; growth of mega-banks), communication (elimination of "fairness doctrine," creation of Fox News, MSNBC, etc., Twitter, etc.), businesses (opening the road to creation and expansion of tech giants like Google; Facebook and consolidation of businesses like airlines) and education.  Like the New Deal, it captured the support of both Republican and Democratic administrations (including, for example, Eisenhower who continued many of the policies instituted by FDR). 

 

Neo-Liberalism turned out to be a defining and unifying order of political economy embraced, as Gerstle sharply points out, by Republicans and Democrats from Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Obama. 

 

Its breakdown has been caused by a tremendous fission in trust and relationships in the United States including among the political parties.  These differences have become moral differences in their character, not just differences in policy. The decline in trust from a level of 75% of the public trusting the government "to do the right thing all or most of the time" in 1958 to 20% in May 2022 traces to many factors, including importantly the disclosure of Nixon's break-in of the Democratic Headquarters and subsequent resignation (trust declining to 36% at the end of his presidency) and then further declining due to the misbegotten invasion of Iraq (declining to 25% at the end of G.W. Bush's administration). 

 

I believe two other causes of the breakdown in public trust and confidence stem importantly from 1) the adversarial, non-stop trampling in broadcast and print media and on social media platforms of the motives, efficacy and moral worth of the opposition, and 2) from the breakdown of the makeup of the family.  Gerstle marshals sobering statistics to demonstrate this. Nationally, a staggering 30% of babies are now born into single-parent homes, up from only 10% in 1965. 

 

The decline of trust in every institution (other than the military) has been well documented, including by me in other posts, and I won’t rehearse the data here.  However, I would state that my two greatest concerns about this country--concerns that I find the hardest to see how we’re going to overcome, are the decline of trust in our institutions* and in each other and in the breakdown of the American family.

 

If I were to critique Gerstle’s book, I would cite a couple of points.  While he makes the case compellingly that the two parties have been united in their view of the right "political economic order,” I don’t believe he provides enough emphasis on the nuances of their differences on cultural issues.  He does point out how the Neo-Liberal philosophy embraced both a spirit of cosmopolitanism, open borders and an attachment to diversity (Democratic) compared to a much greater attachment to family, patriotism, religion and other so-called traditional values (Republican).  

 

I also believe he should have brought more emphasis to how dramatic geo-political changes post-1990 have fractured the free trade, cosmopolitan ethos that prevailed in the post-1990 spirit of Neo-Liberalism.  The passage of MFN for China, the WTO, all were premised on China’s entering the Free World to a far greater degree than is obviously happening. And the spirit on democracy which in 1990 showed signs of animating much of what was developing in Russia has disappeared at this moment.

 

I also wish Gerstle had spent more time addressing the totality of what was happening on the global front and, as part of that, recognized that our illusory belief post the fall of the Soviet Union that the world was aligning almost as one behind our view of the right political-economic order led us to step back on seeking better diplomatic understanding with potential adversaries, Russia and China in particular.   Instead, we pretty much put aside what their future interests and fears might be. 

 

Related to this, Gerstle’s treatment of the last 40 years should have put more emphasis on the importance of human agency.  He does emphasize, correctly, the decisive role of Gorbachev.  But he doesn’t touch on the importance of the different roles played by Chinese leaders, from Deng Xiaoping to now President Xi or President Putin in Russia (including how his outlook toward the West has darkened over the last 15 years).

 

 

*Another sobering set of data showing the decline in spirit of the American public emerges from this recent WSJ-NORC poll. The percentage of people who say these values are important to them, have declined from 1998 to 2023 as follows:

 

Patriotism: 70%-38%

Religion: 62%-39%

Having Children: 59%-30%

Community Involvement: 47%-27%

Money (the exception): 31%-43%

 

Creating and Sustaining a Winning Culture--The "Smell of the Place"

 This 8 minute video presents the clearest and most actionable path to create a winning culture I have ever experienced. I first saw it it watching a video about 25 years ago of a session presented in Davos by Professor Sumatra Ghoshal of the London Business School. I watched it while exercising at home. 

Being greatly moved, I reached out to the Professor and asked him to come to Cincinnati to talk with our senior executives. He did. As I recall, they were similarly moved.

The metaphor, "The Smell of the Place" has played out in real life for me, again and again. 

Enjoy. .

John

On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 3:22 PM, JOHN PEPPER <jepepjr@aol.com> wrote:

https:/ / youtu. be/ UUddgE8rI0E

"Good Wars vs. Misbegotten Wars"

  

LOOKING FOR THE GOOD WAR:  AMERICAN AMNESIA AND THE VIOLENT PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS BY ELIZABETH D. SAMET

 

There is a great deal I like in this book, a great deal.  But as other reviewers have noted, for me it is flawed in drawing on too much detail and in a less than optimum, organized way, drawing on a huge array of not always relevant literary and film references.  Without a doubt, Ms. Samet’s research and her knowledge of Shakespeare, literary figures and film of the 20^th century and into this century are prodigious. 

 

I gained many new insights and much affirmation of what I knew and believed before:

 

1.      The sentimentalized memorialization of the Civil War aimed at bringing White people together, so well documented by David Blight.

 

2.      Fresh for me was how the myth of the Civil War was perpetuated by film in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly the Westerns.  They signaled moral equivalency for each side, failing to recognize that one side (the South) had undertaken war to preserve the enslavement of people. 

 

3.      Samet underscores the reality that all “war is hell.”  Soldiers enter it with a mixture of motives, many laudable but by no means all noble.  We have tended to glorify World War II, a necessary war if there ever was one,  through the work of Stephen Ambrose, Tom Brokaw and Steven Spielberg.  Yet, in drawing out this reality,  she undercuts the reality that there are some “good wars,” ones that are a necessity in the evil they seek to end. This is surely one of them.

 

I have long believed that there are wars of choice, wars that could have been avoided and some wars that could not.  World War II is a war that couldn’t have been avoided, not unless one goes back to the antecedents for Hitler and deny his existence.  I don’t think the Civil War could have been avoided either, not with the dichotomy of beliefs on slavery.  The Spanish-American War was, I believe, a war of choice.  So was Vietnam, in hindsight, misbegotten.  And the same is true of Iraq.

 

You can’t read this book without thinking about the war underway right now between Russia and Ukraine, supported by the U.S. and the European Union.  Was this war avoidable?  Historians will study and debate this forever.  I think it might have been avoided if one goes back to the different decisions that might have been made at the turn of the century.  While it was a narrow window, I believe there was the possibility that, with more foresight and courageous, imaginative leadership, a Pan-European security arrangement, including Russia, could have been put in place.  Whether it would have lasted forever no one can know.  But I think at that point in time, Putin was open to such an arrangement. 

 

By the time we reached 2014, however, with the expansion of NATO, including the prospective inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO and, importantly, the increasing paranoia of Putin that the West was out to surround him ( with enough circumstantial evidence to prove the case in his mind), the risk of war was high.  

Yet, individual agency still existed, in the person of Putin.  I suspect that many other Russian leaders would have reached the same decision he did, but I’m not sure all of them would have.   His belief that Ukraine was part of Russia, something he came to believe in more and more, might not have driven another leader as it drove him. 

 

“We are where we are,” as we tritely say.  But there is an enormous lesson to be learned in this for the future.  Boiled down, it amounts to doing one’s best to see the world as a potential adversary sees it.  We didn’t do that with Russia.  We failed to consider at the turn of the century what would be in the long-term interest of the U.S., Europe, Russia and the world.  We saw the world almost entirely through our lens. Now we confront the challenge of seeing the world as China (and much of the rest of the world outside the West) see it. 

 

Other insights: 

 

1.      Our quick 100-day victory in the first Gulf War allowed us to kick the Vietnam syndrome of having failed.  Positive confidence-affirming signals returned and a sense of hubris along with them.

 

2.      The attack of September 11, 2001 drew on analogies with Hitler which drove us to a flawed war on terrorism, which led us to the misbegotten decision to invade Iraq.

 

There is an aspect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that is especially tragic.  And that is that, even as the Ukrainians rightly view themselves as an independent nation, it is also a civil war in Ukraine.  Countless Russian soldiers are fighting, trying to kill men and women who are extensions of their own families.  There are human dimensions here that only time will reveal,  even as they are being carried out in blood as I write this. 

 

It’s hard to imagine the conflicted feelings—the horror—felt by a Russian soldier who thought he was going to Belarus for exercises and found himself invading Ukraine to kill someone who could be a friend or relative. 

 

Many of the Shakespearian plays which Samet cites were about civil wars in England.  The agony of those wars is being mirrored in Ukraine in ways that will eventually be written about in history and literature.

 

3.      Samet refers often to my favorite philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr.   He brought a cautionary reading to history.  Beware, “if virtue becomes vice through some hidden defect in the virtue; if strength becomes weakness because of the vanity to which strength may prompt the mighty man or nation; if security is transmuted into insecurity because too much reliance is placed upon it; if wisdom becomes folly because it does not know its limits.”

 

Niebuhr believed that this risk had poisoned the evolution of Communism in the 1950s.  And it’s fair to say it has affected us, too, in the United States in our own history.  In fact, it is endemic to human nature.  Moral complacency and superiority can come to easily justify doubtful means to achieve ostensibly virtuous ends. 

 

American innocence—the faith in the essential virtue of our society that makes any critique evidence of ill-will--is more than cautionary.  It’s a warning.  Yet, we must not allow this to bring us to a position of ultimate relativism.  We must recognize that there are truths to be honored, nowhere better summarized than in the words of our Declaration of Independence:  “All men are created equal.”

 

All of this is a reminder of what I’ve seen in the lives of everyone, including myself.  We are curious compounds of good and evil.  Stubborn idealism comes at a price:  namely, an intolerance of complexity, compromise and ambiguity.  Yet, again, we cannot allow this to leave us awash in the foggy no-man’s land of relativism.

 

4.      Robert McNamara’s The Fog of War is worthy of comment.  McNamara’s story illustrates “the slipperiness of beginnings and ends, the refusal of war to stand still long enough to be shaped into a coherent story; the ambient fog obscures causes and consequences as well as ends and means.”

5.      Today, Samet asserts, we celebrate the veteran of World War II as almost an archetype of stoic humility rather than a readily identifiable individual.  Samet castigates this in a way that I disagree with.  For there are values, even if not always present, even if simplified in terms of motivation, embedded in the best of what happened in World War II. For example, the focus on loyalty, of seeking freedom over tyranny.  Yes, a bit of simplification on these values is not all a bad thing so long as it doesn’t disguise the fact that all war is hell. 

 

6.      Sentimental memorialization of the Civil War, with its invidious impact on race relations, continued well into the 20^th century.  In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt unveiled a statue of Robert E. Lee.  His speech tapped into the popular interpretation of the Civil War and Lee.  It also acclaimed Lee as not only a “great leader of men and a great General,” but also as “one of the greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen.”  Roosevelt’s position may have been anchored in a genuine belief, but I doubt it.  It certainly was anchored in his need to get the Southern vote to win the presidency.

 

7.      Frederick Douglass foresaw in his 1875 speech what the reconciliation for the White race through the romantization of the Civil War meant as he plaintively asked:  “When this great White race has renewed its fallacy of patriotism and float back into its accustomed channels, the question for us:  In what position will this stupendous reconciliation leave the colored people?  What tendencies will spring out of it?”

 

Let me conclude as Samet concludes with timeless words from Lincoln.  She draws on his speech of 1838.  Lincoln was meditating on the theme of “the perpetuation of our political institutions.”  He did so, as he writes, with “a curious mixture of respect and impatience.”  The respect grew from his celebrating the importance and influence of the men who had created this country.  A few were still around.  They may have seemed to be “giant oaks,” but they were not giants, only men.  Heroes for their own time but not for all time.

“In his remarks, Lincoln respected the past without being paralyzed by it.  He understood the ways in which improvement must temper veneration and reason moderate passion. He recognized that only truth could conquer the dangerous distortions of myths,” Samet eloquently writes. 

 

And so Lincoln returns to what we find in the Declaration of Independence:   “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”  “That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”

 

That is what we were fighting for in World War II and achieved.

  

That is what the Ukrainians are fighting for at this moment.  It is inspiring.  It is not to be forgotten, not ever, and I doubt if it ever will be.  However, I hope in time we will seek to understand what led to this war and what we can draw from this understanding that might allow us to avoid a similar war in the future.

Countering our Quest to be "Spectacular"

 

The pastor at St. Bart’s Episcopal Church in New York last week offered one of his biting sermons.  It drew on the Gospel which recorded the three temptations which the Devil had presented to Jesus while he was wandering in the wilderness.  He challenged Christ, if you really are the son of God then turn these stones into bread.  Rebuffed on that, the Devil went on to offer Christ the world below them (they were standing on a high mountain) if Jesus would bow down and worship him.  Again rebuffed, the Devil came with his third challenge, for Jesus to throw himself down from a great height.  Again, Jesus said, “No,” returning to the fundamental truth that what really matters is following the words of God.

 

The pastor went on to talk about his dogged determination to “be spectacular.”  He went through a bracing confession of things that he and St. Bart’s pursued that in essence boiled down to trying to be "spectacular". 

He recounted how he and St. Barts sought to outshine other nearby churches through better programming; a more inspiring choir; a larger endowment and stronger sermons.  Yet, these are not the things that matter most, he said.  What matters most  is to be humble, to do everything one can to follow in the steps of Jesus and help each other on that journey. 

 

I haven’t written this simply to record a sermon. No, I do it because it reminds me of things I do which truthfully boil down to trying to “be spectacular.”

I focus on how much I read, on hoping more people will read my blog, I check to see how many “likes” there are on a photo of one of my grandchildren, I  check the price of P&G stock price too often, I count the number of steps I walk each day.  

 I don’t know if you’d call these things “spectacular,” but they are ego-driven and they are diversions from the much simpler and basic task of trying to make a positive difference in other people’s lives, especially my family's.

Pleading Once Again for Responsible Gun Legislation

 I first posted this blog almost five years ago. I do so again today after the murder of three more people in another mass shooting at Michigan State University.  Can't we finally act now?

As many as 50 people—50 men, women and children—might still be alive today if the common-sense gun policies supported by 80% of the American public were in place.  

That’s right.  Fifty people today, 50 more tomorrow, 50 every day after that, might still be alive if  we were acting  on what we know to be true.  

For someone of my age, this fight for life through the adoption of responsible gun policies recalls other fights for life through common-sense regulations. Fights including automobiles and tobacco.

Take automobiles. Today, about 35,000 people die annually as a result of automobile-related accidents.  That’s tragic, but consider that if automobile fatalities per mile were occurring at the same rate today as they were in the year I was born, those 35,000 deaths would not be 50,000, not 100,000, not 200,000, and not even 300,000.  They would be closer to 400,000 people each year. 

Back then, seeing this carnage, nobody talked about banning cars.  But they did come to demand common-sense 

regulations. Seat belts became required; so did airbags.  You were required to pass a driver’s test.  (How, I ask, do you justify requiring a test to drive a car and not a test to shoot a gun?)  You have to get your license renewed every five years.  There are fines for traffic violations and sometimes suspension of your license. 

Make no mistake.  These common sensed regulations didn’t come easily.  Car manufacturers complained about the cost of some of the safety devices. Drivers complained about being "forced" to use seat belts.  But the evidence prevailed.  So did common sense. So did public will.  

  

Or  take tobacco.

What if people were smoking today  at the same rate as when I was a teenager in the mid-1950s?  Almost half the population  smoked then, compared to 15% smoking today.  If that rate of smoking still prevailed, and if the linkage of smoking to mortality remained about the same, up to one million more people might have died last year from smoke-related diseases.  Instead of what is still a tragedy of almost 500,000 people dying from smoke-related illnesses, the death toll could be closer to 1,500,000.  

Believe me, getting common-sense regulations for cigarette smoking was a decades-long battle.  If you think the NRA is a strong lobby today, you should have seen the tobacco lobby.  It supported politicians committed to the industry.  It supported medical conventions and encouraged doctors to recommend cigarettes; I’m serious.  It lobbied against research to establish the linkage of smoking and cancer.  But we kept getting more data linking smoking to cancer, just as we are today on the linkage of guns to gun-related deaths.  

As a result, warning labels were mandated on cigarette packages.  Age limits were imposed on the purchase of tobacco; advertising was regulated to shield children from its influence; excise taxes were increased. 

What drove these changes in automobile and tobacco regulation?  There was increasingly compelling data and research. Above all, this research showed that automobile and tobacco related fatalities werematters of public health.  

We came to recognize that whether a person smokes is not just a private issue.  It's a public health issue.We learned the damaging impact of secondhand smoke.  

We recognized that how a person drives a car is not just a private issue.  It affects others.  It can kill others.  So we insisted that you had to have a license  and demonstrate you were able to drive.

Just as with tobacco and automobiles, owning a gun is not only a private matter. It is also a matter of public health. Tragically, we witness that every day.  So just as with tobacco and automobiles, use of guns must be regulated responsibly.

Importantly, changes in behavior resulting from the regulation of tobacco and automobiles also changed the “culture.”  It is no longer “cool” to smoke.   When I joined Procter & Gamble, there was an ashtray in front of every board seat.   You would walk into a store or restaurant and it could be “cool” to be smoking.  Movie stars were portrayed smoking; men and women. No longer.

It’s no longer “cool” to drive without a seatbelt.  It’s stupid.  That’s what strong social movements can do.  

Culture changes impact everything.  Including business.  Businesses stepped up to forbid smoking on their premises and encourage safe driving habits. 

We’re seeing businesses step up on the gun issue.  Walmart has banned the sale of assault weapons and now has increased the age to 21 at which one might buy a rifle.  Dick’s has done the same thing.  Rental car companies and airlines like Delta have stopped giving preferred discounts to members of the NRA.  Kroger has banned the sale of large magazines. 

 Businesses are getting the message. 

I urge you support businesses which are adopting responsible gun policies.  Let them know that’s why you’re shopping there.  And let those which aren’t adopting similar policies know you’re going to support their competitors.

Focus on electing candidates who support responsible gun policies and rejecting those who don’t.  Nothing counts as much as your vote. Demand to know exactly where a candidate stands on universal background checks, keeping guns out of the hands of people who have been involved in domestic violence and banning assault weapons and large magazines. 

The wind is at our back on this, but it’s going to be a continuing battle.I’m inspired how young people are taking the field.  Let us be worthy of their commitment.   

As I said at the outset, as many as 50 men, women and children might still be alive today if we had adopted responsible gun regulations.  This estimate is not a matter of sheer speculation.  Nineteen state already require background checks for ALL gun sales. In these states,  we are seeing up to a 40-50% lower incidence of gun deaths linked to domestic abuse, suicide and involving law enforcement officers.

These facts don’t call for banning guns. They don't call into question the practices of millions of responsible gun owners.  They don’t deny any reasonably interpreted right conferred by the Second Amendment.  They do call  for common-sense regulations of the kind we have applied to automobiles  and tobacco. Regulations that recognize that having a gun today is not only a private matter; it is a matter of public health.  Let’s act on what we know to be true.  Let’s demand that legislators, business leaders, everyone do the same.  Let’s start saving lives. We can do this.

*This an edited transcript of a talk I gave to a rally of "Moms Demand Action" in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 25  2018