They’re concerned that the bees that are trucked in to pollinate the trees are mistreated, and so they choose to not support this practice.

But we live in community, and someone running a vegan restaurant or serving a meal to vegan friends, concerned that they might offend, doesn’t serve avocado. A few strong opinions change the culture.

And so the cycle continues.

Humans care about status and affiliation, and both are at play in a purity loop.

One can earn more status by caring more about the issue that others are adjacent to. And so the loop gains momentum.

Once a few people make it clear that they’re more orthodox or progressive or concerned or strict or unhypocritical or obedient, others seek to claim the same status. And that becomes a point of affiliation.

Just about every tribe goes through these loops.

Four hundred years ago, neck ruffs became popular among the aristrocracy in Europe. The neck ruff began as a modest collar but evolved into enormous pleated confections that could span two feet across. At their peak, ruffs became so large that special eating utensils with extended handles were invented to allow wearers to get food to their mouths. Some ruffs were so tall and stiff that wearers couldn’t turn their heads and needed help eating.

The instinctual response is to criticize the newest form of purity as absurd. But of course, the absurdity is part of the status on display.

Perhaps it makes more sense to see the loop at work and get back to the work at hand.

“Shut up and drive” is the answer to an argument about what song is playing on the radio. We can tune the radio as we go, but we’re here to drive this thing to where we’re headed.

Enrollment is at the core of the mission. Where are we going and why? If it’s not helping with that, let’s drive and work on it as we go.

Everyone is entitled to their own take. But when we focus on purity and status at the expense of the journey, the distraction costs all of us.

We’re going. Come if you’d like.

        

And sometimes, we only get something because we settled for it.

It helps to be able to discern the difference between the two.

        

When we say even better, we lock in a foundation — we’re affirming that something good already exists — at the same time we create the conditions for improvement.

Ennui and disappointment, on the other hand, are multiplied when we promise things are going to get even worse instead of merely worse.

        

The hard work of a brainstorming session, a pitch collaboration or a negotiation happens long before most people begin.

We hire architects to design expensive buildings, but we design expensive human interactions as an afterthought.

If it doesn’t feel like you’re putting a lot of effort into creating the conditions for magic, you’re probably not creating those conditions.

        

Spammers play a different scheme. One person can steal the time and attention of a million. It costs them nothing (actually, truly, nothing) to add one more name to the list. The lack of care and discernment comes through in their interactions. They steal attention in bulk and treat it casually. No one feels bad when they delete or filter spam.

In B2B selling and other high-value sales calls, the seller puts in a lot of effort. A custom presentation deck, useful spreadsheets, even a flight across the country to meet in person. That effort is expected, because the buyer sees their attention as valuable.

And now, here come AI agents. These are spammers disguised as door-to-door salespeople. They know your name, your history, your details–and they present a pitch that looks and feels as though a human spent a lot of time thinking about it and focusing on the buyer’s needs and desires.

But it’s done on a huge scale. It’s like seine fishing. A huge net is set to catch as many fish as possible, with no regard for the mass destruction it causes as a result.

Our instinct is to respect the work of a pitch that took more effort to create than it will cost us to consume (that’s why books are more respected than blog posts!). But AI agents, working at high speed to churn through the small amount of trust and attention we have left, upend that expectation.

Attention and trust continue their dance, and our choices determine how we’ll show up in the marketplace. Burning trust to get attention rarely pays off.

        

You get an ecard and click. It asks you to log in to your email.

Boom, done. It hacks your email account, steals all of your contacts and then sends itself to the whole address book. And while they’re at it, they could be scraping and misusing all sorts of data.

The first lesson is that you should only log in to your gmail or other email accounts directly, not if you’ve followed a link.

The second is that you really should get a password manager. Many are free or cheap. Some are easy to use.

Mostly, alas, we need to remind ourselves that just because it looks familiar (on the screen! on the internet! in a card!) we can stop paying attention. Especially if an AI said it, or it came to us unasked.

The internet lets ideas spread at scale. It also gives a few bad folks the leverage to cause a lot of havoc.

(And part of the problem lies with Google–they intentionally crowded out the peer-to-peer open net, but haven’t done enough to stop spam or scams.)

Look both ways before crossing.

        

It’s such a common quest that we take it for granted, but it’s new, and it continues to cause stress.

The right answer is productive. It’s resilient. And it’s a powerful ranking tool. The right play wins the game, the right production method cuts costs, and the right theory explains what’s going to happen next.

The right answer doesn’t care about how you feel. It’s still the right answer.

One reason we resist engagements where there might be a right answer is that right answers also determine who is wrong. And we’ve been trained not to be wrong.

Another is that a right answer puts us on the hook. It requires responsibility. It’s easier to simply let someone else announce that they’re right, and do what they say. No assertions, no responsibility.

For ten thousand years, though, the dominant way of thought was the vibe. How does this make you feel? That’s subjective, transient, and up to us. Many ways to spell a word, many explanations for illness, many points of view, each as worthy as the next.

[Status plays many roles when it comes to belief. Those seeking (or possessing) status might celebrate the right answer, because it’s a path toward better. Others might reject the idea of proof, realizing that when subjective ideas collide, those in power can usually dictate what happens next. And for those who struggle in a role of less status, a reliance on belief can offer solace when the right answer lets them down.]

When fear arises, some people grasp for the right answer. The double-blind study, the proven medical intervention, the explained path forward. Others, though, run away from the stark possibilities provided by the right answer and take shelter in “it depends.”

Feelings have a huge evolutionary head start on facts.

        

But no writer knows all the words.

That’s the gap where creativity, effort and possibility lie–between the universal letters and the unlimited words. This is an analogy for arenas as diverse as sports and commerce.

Sometimes, we work on a project where our competitors have access to more letters than we do. It’s unlikely you’ll win that competition.

But if you start out with the same letters as everyone else, don’t spend a lot of time admiring your letters. It’s the words that matter.

        

If the people in our circle begin to experience behavior that’s kinder than necessary, the expectations for what’s necessary will ratchet forward, making everything more pleasant.

And… being kind is a lovely way to spend your day.

[Compare this to an alternative: “be as selfish as you can get away with.” Hardly worth going down that path.]

        

On the other hand, if you want to watch less television, disconnect the TV after every viewing session.

Convenience leads to consumption.