I was recently reading reviews of the latest movies out for our distraction. One of the directors, possibly the acclaimed Iranian director Asghar Faradi said that a great story is not good versus evil but good versus good. I thought this a very interesting concept and thought provoking.

Following this train of thought lead me to the question; at the end of the day are humans fundamentally good or are we good and evil? Can our evil or immoral acts be judged as mistakes from a fundamentally good being? Or can we say that we are so alienated from our instinctive and innate goodness that we can no longer be forgiven and let off the hook for our outrageously unethical actions.

The director who brought this question to the surface, I think suggests that good versus evil, or good versus good is a matter of perspective. Take an extreme example such as war. Here we like to think it is black and white, we judge one side as evil and the other (usually ourselves) as good. History takes a different perspective depending whose hands it is scribed with. Australian historians are inclined to talk of the atrocities committed by the Japanese, their barbaric practices in war, the prisoner of war camps and the many lives lost at their cruel inhumane hands. Japanese historians are probably more likely to concentrate on the atomic weaponry we used to stop the war and kill thousands of innocent civilians in a horrific burning frenzy of terror. Was this good versus good, or perhaps equally without discrimination, evil versus evil?

Once your mind sees this situation, it is everywhere. Is it good looking after good’s needs and wants. A girlfriend steals your partner. Is she evil? Not really, just selfish as we all are. She is probably as good at the end of the day as most people, she has just acted selfishly to fulfill a need or desire. This theme can be tested at the more extreme ends of horror. Psychology talks about psychopaths; these are probably people that ninety nine percent of us could easily judge as evil. However, reading a book recently (Life Before Birth) about the origins of our personalities and characters one is able to almost have compassion even for these people. The author Arthur Janov talks about the importance and weight of imprints we bear from very early traumas in life, often in the womb. At this stage of life we are unimaginably sensitive and alive while at the same time often being challenged with situations of life and death. This has a myriad of effects on our neurophysiology and anatomy. Parts of the brain involved in feeling and empathy can be retarded, hormones essential to feeling and giving love under produced. This can result in psychopaths, people who feel absolutely nothing. These people are those who have probably suffered the greatest, the greatest threat to their lives and the greatest neglect and abandonment, the result is a robot capable of anything as they are totally devoid of feelings.

A book I have been reading (A Species In Denial) explores such concepts as good versus evil and our moral instincts. It suggests that we are indeed innately good but the human condition has meant a heroic yet tragic exploration away from these instincts. The current diabolical paradoxical disarray of our society, the human condition is a result of this journey.

At the end of the day it has been an interesting thought journey but no doubt I will continue to judge good versus evil according to my personal biases.

Photo Credit

Stone carvings at St Mary’s church – Wikimedia Creative Commons

Pregnant Woman – Microsoft Clip Art Collection

Guest Author Bio

Florence Stroud
Discussion of the real issues in life and insightful writing that really deals with true human experience is what interests me.

Currently looking at the ideas expressed on the World Transformation Movement website.

Blog / Website: www.worldtransformation.com

Good vs Evil Or Good vs Good? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

We all have them from time to time – strong, emotionally-colored urges to act in ways that make no rational sense and are counterproductive in our current modern society. Our forbears, and conservative Christians even today, ascribed this to “Original Sin” and prescribed prayer and penance as a countermeasure. Classical psychiatry presumes that the roots of such behavior lie in early childhood experience and suggests uncovering the experiences that planted seeds of present maladaptive habits as a cure.

In recent years anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists have been paying more attention to the possibility that many troublesome urges are the hard-wired product of evolution – that they have a basis in our human genes and are there because for most of the history of the species, they were adaptive. This makes intuitive sense to me, and is more in keeping with my own experience than the psychiatric model.

One current area of active research in evolutionary psychology deals with disgust and its role in disease avoidance. Disgust is distinct from fear and hatred. It produces nausea and a strong urge to avoid physical contact, not a fight or flight response. Smells are more powerful triggers of disgust than sight or sound, suggesting, among other things, that more primitive parts of the brain are involved and that disgust responses have very deep evolutionary roots.

There is much anecdotal evidence and some scientific data suggesting that disgust reactions are stronger among pregnant women than among the general population. It has been suggested that morning sickness, for example, once served an adaptive function by making pregnant women less likely to eat toxic or contaminated foods at a time when the developing fetus is most vulnerable to toxins or disease. Substances tend to be disgusting more or less in proportion to the likelihood they will spread human disease. Rotting meat and human or carnivore feces are disgusting; rotting vegetables and horse manure merely unpleasant. A person disfigured by the scars of trauma provokes a very different reaction from one with oozing sores.

When I was pregnant, I experienced a strong negative visceral reaction to severely handicapped children, which was something of an embarrassment since it ran counter to everything I had been taught about proper compassionate behavior. It required considerable exercise of will to keep from crossing the street to avoid coming in close proximity to a child with cerebral palsy. In retrospect I think it was that atavistic portion of my brain processing the handicap as something possibly contagious, and urging me to keep at a distance to protect my unborn child.  In this instance, overriding the instinct was clearly the right thing to do. At other times, listening to one’s “gut” may not be such a bad idea. Pregnancy, for example, sharpened my normal aversion to certain artificial sweeteners that are now suspected of having undesirable effects on adult human metabolism at high levels and could have corresponding effects on a developing fetus.

Further Reading:

Natural News contains a compendium of information on links between artificial sweeteners and a variety of health problems including metabolic changes and premature birth.

Science Daily features an article on the role of disgust in evolution and its possible role in moral judgments.

Photo Credits:

Photo courtesy of Martha Sherwood.  Public Domain.

Listening to my Gut is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Personification of Bad Government from a fresco by Pietro Lorenzetti, Siena, circa 1330.

Photo credit:

Photo Courtesy of Martha Sherwood

Pathogenic Evil is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

I found this Good over at the webzine Good. A simple name, Good, isn’t it? Maybe too simple. But I’m enjoying some of the articles anyway. Back to the question: Are you an Asker or a Guesser?  Here are the basics about Askers and Guessers, originally appearing as a Guardian newspaper article:

“This terminology comes from a brilliant web posting by Andrea Donderi that’s achieved minor cult status online. We are raised, the theory runs, in one of two cultures. In Ask culture, people grow up believing they can ask for anything — a favour, a pay rise — fully realising the answer may be no. In Guess culture, by contrast, you avoid “putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes … A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.

“Neither’s “wrong”, but when an Asker meets a Guesser, unpleasantness results. An Asker won’t think it’s rude to request two weeks in your spare room, but a Guess culture person will hear it as presumptuous and resent the agony involved in saying no. Your boss, asking for a project to be finished early, may be an over-demanding boor — or just an Asker, who’s assuming you might decline. If you’re a Guesser, you’ll hear it as an expectation. This is a spectrum, not a dichotomy, and it explains cross-cultural awkwardnesses, too: Brits and Americans get discombobulated doing business in Japan, because it’s a Guess culture, yet experience Russians as rude, because they’re die-hard Askers.”

Now, I am always wary of generalizations about entire nations. Nothing, in and of itself, “explains cross-cultural awkwardness.” But maybe we can just put that aside, and think about ourselves individually for a moment.

I definitely lean towards the Guess end of the spectrum. In fact, sometimes I get frustrated that I can’t just go out and ask more often. What’s interesting to me from a Buddhist perspective is that I can see attachments that can come up for both extremes of this pair. Askers probably struggle with entitlement, thinking they deserve more than they really do. Guessers, like myself, often struggle with rejection, and worry that we’ll appear pushy, demanding, and unlikeable.

Yet, like any dichotomy, no one is something all of the time. In the classroom, as a teacher, I’m definitely more of an Asker. Which makes me wonder how much this has to do with power, and/or perceived power, within a given situation. There have been many times when I’ve felt powerless in my life. In fact, my current work situation has brought up plenty of this feeling. And this has corresponded in a shift away from directness in general, mostly out of a fear that being direct might cost me my job.

On the other hand, as our Zen Center’s board chair, I’ve grown comfortable enough to do the opposite. It’s obvious that my friends and colleagues on the board respect my work, and leadership, and so being an Asker isn’t so risky.

Now, a person doesn’t have to have the kind of defined power of being a Board Chair in order to be more on the Asking end of the spectrum. It’s about perception as much as anything that determines our behavior. A person who has little defined power could easily be very forward with requests of others if they are tapped into an “internal” sense of power.

In any case, my own experience has been that when I’m trusting life as it is, I’m better able to respond to the situation at hand. And maybe that situation calls for being an Asker and maybe it calls for being a Guesser. How about you? Where do you lean and why do you think that is?

Are you an Asker or a Guesser? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Have you ever had trouble make a choice? Would you ever let someone choose for you? Should you? Sheena Iyengar has studied how we make choices and and how we feel about the choices we make.

At TEDGlobal, Iyengar discusses about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

Now a Columbia University professor, Iyengar became known for her “jam study,” done while she was a grad student, which exposed a myth about decision making — contrary to what we assume, when we have too many choices, we tend not to choose at all.

Her book, The Art of Choosing, looks into “the complex relationship between choice and freedom, and why one doesn’t always go with the other. You’ll see that too much choice can overwhelm us.” The book shed slight into how we build our lives, one choice at a time.

Video Credit

Courtesy of TEDglobal.com

Sheena Iyengar On the Art of Choosing: TED Video is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

When I was in high school, I was painfully shy. I was the girl who spent her lunch hour in the library doing homework — not so much out of studiousness, but more out of complete and utter avoidance of any kind of social interaction.

For my 15-year-old self, Dante’s nine circles had nothing on the spirals of students in the cafeteria. I was so horribly insecure that I couldn’t even bear to have a conversation with anyone. I didn’t want to be looked at or asked out on a date or invited to parties.

I just wanted to be invisible. The moment I was spoken to, I would feel my cheeks instantly flame, and I would descend into myself. Literally. I turtled down into the jacket that I never unbuttoned, wrapped my arms around myself in private solace, and tried to respond as quickly as possible in order to get that fiery glare of the spotlight off myself.

I’ve come a long way since then! That was a different life. I actually enjoy socializing now; I have a circle of close friends whose company is a source of light in my life, and a boyfriend of four years whose embrace warms me to the core. I have grown into my leonine self and actually seek out attention at times. Though, all that being said, on bad days I feel my shoulders rising despite myself, and I start to retreat inwards.

A friend recently lent me her copy of The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allan and Barbara Pease, and it was an enlightening read. One particular gem that struck me was the line, “When the body closes, so does the mind.” According to the Peases, when you cross your arms, you are showing that you feel insecure and threatened as you are placing your arms in front of yourself as a barrier and protecting yourself from frontal attack.

When you cross your legs, you likewise are showing a “closed, submissive, or defensive attitude as they symbolically deny access to the genitals.” Now, to me, the message you are telegraphing to others is of secondary interest — what blew me away was that your posture and gestures communicate a message back to yourself, an internal order to shut down mentally. And in response, the mind walls off the world.

Right now, you might be thinking to yourself, “Hey, I cross my arms sometimes. It doesn’t mean I’m threatened or nervous; I’m just comfortable!” The book anticipates this argument with the point that you probably ARE comfortable because your bodily comportment naturally aligns with your mood. “When someone feels defensive or insecure, crossed arms and legs feel comfortable because it matches their emotional state.”

This brings me to the bottom line: if there is such a natural parallel between the mind’s thought and the body’s (re)action, can you change your body language? Can you fake it? The answer is no, you can’t fake it, at least not convincingly over time because of the likelihood that there will be incongruity between your gestures, expressions, and spoken words, which people will pick up on, if only subconsciously.

However, I think what this book highlights is that communication is always reciprocal and dialogic in nature. The mind talks to the body, and the body talks the mind…and then the mind talks to the body again and so on, back and forth. It’s a conversation. For example, when your mind gets nervous (such as before a job interview), your hands can get cold and clammy. Interestingly, this happens because the body senses the mind’s stress and is preparing for literal “fight or flight.”

The blood is rushing away from your hands to be diverted to the arms and legs, in preparation for you to run (or battle). BUT…you can send another message, in effect, to override the first and trick the brain. If you take your cold, clammy interview hands, and imagine warming them in front of a campfire, “this visualization technique is proven to raise the temperature of the average person’s hands by 3-4 degrees.”

We can apply this to closed body language too and answer the “can you change it?” question: of course. Uncross those arms and legs! The Peases advise you to “practice using positive and open gestures; this will improve your self-confidence and others will perceive you in a more positive way.”

In other words, ultimately, you can’t fake it, but you can create it. When you open your body, you open your mind. There’s a beautiful quote from Anais Nïn, both literally and metaphorically apt, that reads, “And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

Photo Credits

“Fu – Returning” Original Bliss @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Body Language: Can You Plagiarize Confidence? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

A few weeks ago my family was walking down the street in Sidney by the Sea on our way to brunch. It had been a stressful week of constant cleaning and prepping our house for a parade of real estate agents. Alas, the for sale sign was still on our lawn, along with a zillion other for sale signs now popping up like dandelions everywhere in the city. We were exhausted.

As we passed the corner with the bank on it, I glanced at a street musician playing guitar rather poorly. “Smile,” he said. “Life’s not that bad.”

I paused ever so slightly.

I didn’t smile.

“How does he know what our life is like?” I whispered to my husband. “What if we were coming back from a funeral or had just lost a job? What if we COULDN’T smile because of some physical defect? What if we just didn’t want to…what if….”

My husband looked at me patiently, recognizing this for the Seinfeld moment it was. My inner Elaine was emerging.

It came down to this: the guitar player’s delivery of “Just smile” wasn’t a request, or an attempt to cheer me — it was more like a demand, an invasion.

Just smile. The word “just” implies it is simple to smile at will, as in Nike’s slogan, “Just do it”. What I think Nike really means is “Just do it ALREADY. Everyone else is just doing it. Why the heck aren’t you? What’s WRONG with you that you can’t just do it?”

I smile a lot. I really do. And I have lots of things to smile about. I also laugh a lot. But in repose my face has a natural melancholy to it even when I’m not sad.

And sometimes I look grumpy when I’m not, possibly because I’m nearsighted so I squint a lot because I lose my glasses a lot.

So I’m not anti-smiling. I know smiling helps your immune system, it can lower blood pressure, it releases natural endorphins and serotonin, it makes you seem more successful and likable.

Some studies suggest that just the act of smiling actually makes you feel happier. After all, isn’t that what Nat King Cole wanted everyone to do when he sang, “You’ll find that life is still worthwhile/If you just smile.”

But there’s something wrong in that lyric. Some of the saddest people I’ve known were ones who smiled a lot. They put on a brave face. They kept up appearances. They ended up depressed or ill. And they only recovered — if they recovered at all — when they began to get real, to excavate beneath the smile, and the substratum of sorrow to find and begin to nurture an authentic joy.

It’s downright disconcerting to talk to someone who is always smiling? Always chipper. Always let’s-get-happy! I figure they’ve either discovered the secret to life or they’re hiding something. That constant smile is like spraying Febreze to cover an odour. The odour doesn’t go away. It just lurks beneath the scent of “fresh linen.”

Children, I think, can tell the difference between a real smile and a forced one. The forced smile scares them. It’s why so many kids are ‘weirded out’ by clowns with grins painted on. It’s why The Joker in Batman is so scary. The smile wasn’t real.

“Some people wear their smile like a disguise,” said singer Ani Difranco. “Those people who smile a lot, watch their eyes. I know ’cause I’m like that a lot. You think everything’s ok, and it is . . . ’till it’s not.”

“Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening,” said Greta Garbo, who wasn’t known for her smiles.

And then, of course, there’s the wisdom of George Carlin. “If a man smiles all the time,” said Carlin, “he’s probably selling something that doesn’t work.”

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t smile if you feel like smiling. No one wants to be around someone who constantly wears a hangdog expression. A real smile, one that comes from the heart, is a gift. It can’t be bought, begged or demanded from someone.

I guess what I’m talking about is the freedom to be authentic, to walk down the street lost in your thoughts without some joker saying, “Smile. Life’s not that bad.”

Better that he had simply given me a smile. It would have changed everything.

Photo Credits

“Smile” alan cleaver 2000 @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“080409 Smile Crossing” Dan 4th @ Flickr. com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“Smile ” Derek Purdy @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Smile…or Else: The Forced Psychology Behind Smiling is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

My life is full of contradictions, or what I call my bi-polar activity. Not that I have some clinically diagnosed chemical imbalance in my aging grey matter; rather, unlike most of my friends whose work and home life are often inter-related, mine is completely disparate. When I work, it’s full on — 35 to 42 days every day, 14 hrs a day. And when I’m home for the same length of time, it’s up to me to keep busy.

I work in countries where a family visit isn’t even a remote possibility, so no one close to me ever sees how I make a living. I’m immersed for long periods in situations where I am fortunate to gain a unique insight to an industry, or a political issue which, when I come back home, generally places me in exact opposition to popular beliefs.

For example, I have a different viewpoint regarding the Alberta tar sands because I’ve flown over them, landed at various camps, and flown guided tours for visiting media, diplomats and moguls.

I’ve seen the good and the bad, and only the bad gets into the newspapers and TV news. But in the global perspective all of that pales to the environmental impact of oil exploration in third world countries. Baku, Azerbaijan comes to mind. A Chinese drill rig in Sudan. A rusted and listing drill ship off the coast of West Africa.

Now don’t get me wrong — I don’t blindly support the oil industry. To me they’re like the Big Three Auto makers: auto-bots cranking out an inferior product nobody wants until one day…poof. It all ends.

Oil companies may be a bit more devious in their search for longevity, but just in case, I put a down payment on an awesome pure electric car — a Tesla Sedan — set for delivery in 2012. First time in my life I’ve planned that far ahead.

I actually had to prorogue my life for a few months to achieve that, my own personal re-calibration.

No, not really.

Mention the Seal Hunt and blood spurts out of people’s eyes, yet when I flew the Federal Fisheries people to inspect one of the last hunts in the 80s, I saw an orderly industry, well regulated and as humane as any abattoir. Of course I hunted and fished and trapped as a teenager growing up in the north, so I knew a thing or two about blood on the snow and the challenges of surviving off the proceeds of a trap line. Not easy.

Would I buy my wife a seal skin coat or shawl? Of course not. Fur just isn’t our thing.

So now I find myself in one of the world’s most dangerous places. And everyone in the world knows exactly how dangerous it is, because they see it on the news. And of course only ex-military, mercenaries, misfits and extreme adventure junkies go there. To fly helicopters.

Far from it.

I’ve never been in the military, nor would I wish enlistment upon my archenemy. Although I have gained some insight and moderation to those views…

No comment on the misfit category, but as for being an adventure junkie — up until a few years ago I couldn’t even climb a ladder to clean my rain gutters. Not because I had bad knees, or I just didn’t want to do such a mundane job. I simply suffered from an acute case of acrophobia — the fear of heights.

And how can a pilot be afraid of heights? Surprisingly, it’s not that unusual.

While researching an article on phobias, I learned that acrophobia affects 6 to 10 percent of the general population. But a retired professor of aviation psychology at the University of Southern California found that the rate of acrophobia was close to 90 percent in some of the pilot groups he studied.

Now that doesn’t mean that the next time you go flying you’re going to see the pilots break out in a sweat, or start chanting some Zen mantra to relax. That’s because pilots are in control of their environment, they understand aerodynamics and gravity, and some can even chew gum and walk at the same time.

I can take a helicopter to 10,000 feet and not bat an eye. I used to drop off geologists on narrow ridges and peaks, pick up drillers from tiny wooden platforms perched on the edge of a sheer cliff, and other than the normal anxiety experienced when confronted with the immense natural landscape, all was well in the universe.

But if I had to shut down on the sharp spine of a mountain range and wait for my customer, I would have to slide out of the helicopter, keep one hand on the machine, drop low to the ground — a Gollum-like creature dressed in a flight suit — and put on a great act of nonchalance. If I got too close to the edge, I could feel the gravity pulling me over and I frequently foresaw my tragic and ironic end.

Glass elevators, cable cars, suspension walkways, and peering over a high-rise balcony all produced the exact same sensation. Who needed an expensive roller coaster ride to get a thrill? Virtual rides with the seat moving all of one or two inches on hydraulic jacks was enough excitement for me.

The irony of this has been an endless source of disbelief and laughter — me being the brunt of most of it.

“You fly a helicopter but can’t go on a roller coaster?”

Yeah, yeah. I get it.

Then a few years ago I built an addition to our house, and I had to climb up and down ladders, scurry across joists and rafters — all in slow motion, mind you — one hand always in a death grip holding on for dear life. (The construction progressed in slow motion as well, a fact brought to my attention almost daily by my wife.) When it came time to finish the roof, I had myself tied off by ropes as if I were crossing a bottomless chasm on the ice fields of Mount Everest, even though I was, at most, eight feet off the ground.

But it worked — I faced that fear like some Charles Bronson character and was soon able to climb a ladder and knock the snow off our satellite dish. And last year I strapped on a harness, hooked myself up to a steel cable and zip-lined through the old growth forest of Vancouver Island. I even released my white-knuckle grip on the harness for a moment and enjoyed myself as I spun round and round, nearly out of control.

It’s all about risk management, and in the aviation industry I manage risk daily. On top of that, just to keep my licence, I have to write nine exams annually and subject myself to an annual Pilot Proficiency Check where every minute action and decision is evaluated while flying in a simulator. I have a medical every six months, where any minor blip on the doctor’s radar could mean the end of this particular career. If I had become a doctor or a lawyer I could have graduated and never be tested, prodded or evaluated again.

On the other hand, everyone in the aviation industry knows that flying is composed of hours and hours of boredom interspersed with moments of stark terror.

So maybe my bi-polar activity just comes with the territory.

Photo Credits

“Fieziabad”  © Shawn Evans

“Winter Storage” © Shawn Evans

“Our Fleet” © Shawn Evans

My Bi-polar Blood Stained Existence in A War-Ravaged Society is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Have you spent your entire life learning to be happy … or unhappy? According to Dr. Srikumar Rao, Ph.D., most of us have lived our lives learning to be unhappy, even though happiness might be our true goal.

In this simple yet profound TED video created at Arbejdsglaede Live! 2009, Dr. Rao teaches us how to un-program ourselves from the “I’d be happy if …” mental model, and tap into the happiness in our very DNA.

I admit that I was skeptical of more “be happy” psychobabble when I first began watching this TED video, but Dr. Rao’s message grew on me and I began looking at all the ways I have learned to be unhappy. Importantly, Dr. Rao doesn’t just identify the problem, he offers simple yet effective suggestions and the fascinating rationale for his theories.

Srikumar Rao was an executive at Warner Communications and McGraw-Hill before he created the MBA course, “Creativity and Personal Mastery.” According to TED.com, “The course — the only business school course that has its own alumni association — shows students how to discover their unique purpose, creativity and happiness, through group work and a philosophical perspective. Its popularity has led to write-ups in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Business Week.”

Dr. Rao is the author of Are You Ready to Succeed: Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life.

With thanks to TED.com

Part I:

Part II:

Photo Credit

“Mission 172: This morning draw small happy faces on all your fingers, and a big smiley face on your tummy” peyri @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Plug Into Your Hard-Wired Happiness: TED Video is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

A lot of people must have fantasies about proving their worth to old high school foes, at least if the list at the movie rental shop is any indication. The plot line goes like this: impending high school reunion, former square-peg starts to stress, undergoes makeover, makes entrance as a shining success, and then comes to the realization she doesn’t need classmates’ validation after all.

Don’t get me wrong. If I thought I could pull off a one-upmanship at my looming 20-year high school reunion, I’d consider making an appearance. But as it stands, I really don’t have time to schedule-in a tummy tuck, several rounds of Botox and a winning lotto ticket, so I’ll probably give it a pass.

It’s not that I don’t feel happy about where I am in life. I do. And I wouldn’t trade a thing. But you know as well as I do that when Ms. Perfect shows up wearing designer digs and looking not a day older than 25, confidence ignores logic and starts to crumble.

Who is Ms. Perfect? Oh, that person who just seemed to sail through life’s often unkind moments – like puberty, calculus and the prom. It’s not that you actually have anything against Ms. Perfect personally. In fact, the annoying part is that you can’t help but like her. She’s just got charisma. And it gets her far. With teachers, other students, and even parents.

But you kind of figure that once you and your high school crowd leave school, the playing field will change. In the “real world,” other things will matter just a much. Things of substance. Right?

Wrong. As it turns out, the kind of social signals that people like Ms. Perfect send out can lead to more sucessful salary negotiations and even greater chances of survival after a plane crash. And Alex “Sandy” Pentland, who directs the MIT Human Dynamics Lab, has the numbers to prove it.

In the most recent issue of Harvard Business Review (January-February 2010), Pentland was asked to put his research findings to the test:

“The challenge: Can we really tell who will succeed in competitive business situations without knowing what they have to offer?

So here’s what they did:

Sandy Pentland and colleague Daniel Olguin Olguin outfitted executives at a party with devices that recorded data on their social signals – tone of voice, gesticulation, proximity to others, and more. Five days later the same executives presented business plans to a panel of judges in a contest. Without reading or hearing the pitches, Pentland correctly forecast the winners, using only data collected at the party.”

Yes, you read that right. Using only data from only the party – they did not read or hear the business presentations – they were able to identify which individuals would succeed. The quality of the ideas could have been garbage for all Pentland and Olguin Olguin knew, but they still managed to predict who would win this business-plan competition with 87% accuracy.

But ever since you first came across those Ms. or Mr. Perfects, you had a gut instinct about this, didn’t you? The interesting part about Pentland’s research is not that the winner continues to win, it’s that the social signals that enable winning can now be measured and quantified.

This is actually good news for the less charismatic among us. Take Penelope Trunk for example. Trunk is an entrepreneur and founder of Brazen Careerist, whose blog has more than 48,000 subscribers. She openly acknowledges that she has no social intuition. And that’s because she has Asperger Syndrome. And yet, she has managed to succeed in the workplace. How? By studying precisely the kind of research that Pentland conducts and applying it to her career life.

But there’s more than research that can be used to advantage. There’s the internet. It is far easier to present yourself as a socially proficient human being virtually than in real life. With a blog, for example, you can choose when you feel like communicating, edit your words and even steal a few good jokes to script-in intermittently. Not so much in real life. In real life, there’s stuttering and blank expressions and feeling just plain awkward. The internet has truly levelled the playing field between the charismatic and the not-so-charismatic.

For me, this is all good news. Why? Not because I feel that I particularly lack charisma (I have, after all, been able to charm a person or two into buying me a coffee). But because it’s allowed me to connect with people that I likely wouldn’t have had the opportunity to otherwise. People that are particularly shy or introverted. People who don’t work in communications and throw their photo up on a blog. And these people have enriched my life. Deeply.

So while many find that the internet has expanded their world. For me, it’s made the world smaller. With lots more winners in the room.

Photo Credits

“Marilyn Monroe” danny bikspr @ flickr. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

Winner Takes All. Again. is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN