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The presentation I made to The 21 Convention in Tampa in October of 2014 has finally been made available. I spoke on the underlying empathy strategies that result in the DISC personality profile, providing a scorecard to human motivation to the people who need it most: Cautious, socially-awkward nerds.

The events surrounding that presentation are taken up in this week’s Church of Splendor homily. My take? I killed it. The upshot? I got fired. Other people might be dismayed by such an outcome, but I am Driven/Incandescent: If there’s no risk of getting canned, I’m not working hard enough.

A number of other videos are cited in this one. These are those in their order of importance (to me):

• My presentation on the empathy of DISC. (My slides for this presentation.)

• My interview with Marilee Johnson.

• A podcast with Steve Mayeda and Socrates.

• The DISC of Love and Sales.

• My long interview with Anthony Johnson, Socrates and Marilee Johnson.

All of this grows out of two short books I wrote in the late Summer of 2014, both of which you should read to reap all I have to sow: Nine Empathies and Shyly’s Delight.

If you want to explore your social world – discerning why it is so-often broken and how to go about fixing it – this is where the magic happens.

And if you’re looking for a speaker who can deliver the goods – fun, funny, original, insightful and inspiring – hire me. Your audience will love me – even if it turns out you don’t.

What cost Donald Trump Iowa? The man is a phony – and everyone knows it.

I’ve written too much about this loser already, and I expect there will be more to be heard from Brother Willie. For now, a brief gloss to defend the headline.

First: Trump is an Id (Incandescent/Driven) with outrageous father-hunger. An Is is negotiable; he wants to be liked. An Ic is implacable, which is why you’re more likely to find him in government or other inescapable spaces, rather than in business. An Id is a carney: He will say whatever it takes to get the deal done, and every scruple you find on the man will have been put there by conscious intention, rather than by long-standing habit of mind. Steve Jobs was Donald Trump with slightly better values. Look for this profile in memorable politicians from history – whose crimes we are most often only too happy to forget.

Id is a hardy reptile, and Trump is a very big lizard, owing to the outrages that made him what he is. Every bully on every playground is telling you awful truths about his homelife. That Trump has only gotten worse as a bully, all his life, is how you can measure the scale of his outrage. He is a man out of Sophocles, and in all the worst ways. I look forward to according him nothing but pity.

But Donald Trump is a Prom King, not an actual leader. He is Driven for Incandescent purposes, not the other way around, which means that how other people see him will always matter more to him than getting the job done. This is why he has been a serial failure in business, contrary to his blowhard claims: The claims matter a hell of a lot more to him than the failures.

Moreover, what people see as Trump being a leader is actually Trump being the Prom King, the social arbiter who sustains his false status by pre-emptively rejecting all potential challengers. He doesn’t have an actual following. What he has is (more…)

How is that you can get along so perfectly with your dog or cat, when there is so much ongoing conflict in your marriage? One very big reason is that you and your pets do not have irrational expectations of each other. Your dog is going to be who he is, and you don’t expect him to be you instead. You are assuredly mystifying to your cat, and yet she manages to take your bizarre behavior in stride.

Continuing with our discussion of rancor-management, this week’s Church of Splendor homily illuminates the path to a rancor-free marriage:

There’s a new Barbie down at the mall – and hot she is not. In an attempt to quiet the roar of shrill criticism over the unattainable ideal set by that classic Barbie physique, Mattel has elected to toss all ideals onto the trash-heap of history.

What could be more compassionate that to aim squarely for the middle? Nothing inspires indolence like the celebration of mediocrity, and no one sets a better example for impressionable children than the impresionable children who spawn them.

Accordingly, I’ve prepared a list of other anti-ideals to enshrine in semi-movable inaction figures. My sad and solemn promise: All examples are drawn from real life.

1. Manatee Barbie. If fat is beautiful, she’s the queen of the mall! She comes with her own power-chair. Insulin drip optional. 
2. Bulimarexia Barbie. Because lunch is always prettier the second time you see it. Comes with infinite reupchuckable food supply. 
3. Yoga Pants Barbie. Guarantee: Zero anatomical secrets concealed. 
4. Manatee Ken. Guarantee: Even in the tightest of fleece fashions, not a single anatomical detail is revealed. 
5. Slugly Futt Barbie. She somehow manages to squeeze into any of Classic Barbie’s outfits – but Classic Barbie will never wear them again. 
6. Infinidistant Ken. Even though he never looks up from his smart phone, he still manages to impregnate Manatee Barbie. 
7. Backwards Ballcap Ken. World’s greatest dad? Not so much. Even so, he’s always passionately committed to nothing. 
8. O.G. Pretend Ken. Slight, white and not too bright, he has one word for the world: “Word!” 
9. O.G. For Realz Ken. Available with optional offspring – who will be raised by Barbie’s mom. 
10. Hispanafrasian Barbie. Is she black? Hispanic? Asian? Muslim? There’s a new don’t-ask-don’t-tell in town! 
11. Frustrated Rock Star Ken. Because somebody’s gotta wear the black top-hat around here! 
12. Transsexual Ken. He puts the ‘out’ in pout – and makes Slugly Futt Barbie feel so pretty! 
13. Gnomerod Ken. Is he a nimrod? Or is he a gnome? Pudgy and hairless, he comes complete with five identical sweatsuits. 
14. Lumbersexual Ken. Changes his beard and hairstyle once a week. Changes his (more…)

Sunday’s Church of Splendor homily takes us once beyond rancor management: By apprehending the empathy strategies of the people around you, you can engineer your social groups – marriage, family, work – to avoid rancor altogether, replacing it with enduring delight for everyone.

When a kitten is afraid of you, you don’t bellow at or mock its fears. There’s a reason you don’t react appropriately to the fear-induced strategies of the people you live and work with – and that reason is wrong. The people who attend to me are learning how to do better. You could be one of them.

Of all the crazy cats we’ve ever known, she was by far the craziest, and I can prove that proposition with just one example: She didn’t believe in gravity. She would lay flat on my chest with all four legs splayed out wide, an unwitting imitation of a cat-skin rug, with every claw dug deep into my shirt – and my skin – just in case.

She was born the runt of her litter. She never got enough milk, and then she was weaned too young. Still worse, she got herself knocked-up in her first heat by a much bigger tom and her own kittens were so big they almost suckled her dry. When they were rescued, she was barely half-an-inch across at the belly.

She was adopted by a lady who thought she was over her cat allergies but wasn’t, so she came to us as a foster cat until her forever family could find her – but that never happened because her forever family turned out to be us.

We called her Ebony because she was so very black, with just a hint of smoke in her undercoat. She was slight and lean always, even after she got some weight on her, and we always thought of her as the Audrey Hepburn of our cats – always beautiful, always elegant, always distant with the other cats.

We kept her because people can be so stupid about black cats. And because she was born most-likely-to-be-tormented anyway. And because our daughter Meredith, holding Ebony in the top-left in the photo, taken for our Christmas card in the year 2000, fell in love with her. It was with Meri that Ebony perfected her claws-out splayed repose, as comfortable as she ever got in a world that would not hold still. She glommed onto me when Meri was away, eventually glomming onto me in perpetuity.

And her crazy was so complete that, had she been human, I could not have kept her at bay with a restraining order and (more…)

A short clip from yesterday’s Church of Splendor homily, how to make Donald J. Trump blow up in public like the fat, needy pussy he is:

This analysis is based in the idea of empathy for the monster. I’m covering a lot of ground quickly in the video, but what makes a monster is outrage, the child’s perception of deliberate, conceptualized pain. Fred Trump’s summary rejection of young Donald is why the man is such a showy, bullying Id to this very day.

Bill Clinton is Is with huge father-hunger. Barack Obama is Ic, with that same giant hole in his heart. Of the three Id, Is or Ic, each coupled with an outrageously insatiable need for paternal approval, I think Id is the most dangerous. This is the profile that people call ‘sociopath’ or ‘malignant narcissist.’ This is all still empathy, but it comes in a form that thoughtless people – that is to say, scientists – insist is without empathy.

If you’re not studying me on empathy strategies, you are missing out on most of what’s going on around you.

Curt Doolittle has something to prove, and if you don’t sit down, shut up and take it like a man, he’ll— he’ll— he’ll lecture you some more, dagnabit!

That’ll teach you!

I made mention of Doolittle last week, and he’s been doing his best to prove me right about his ugly character ever since:

The actual purpose of NAP is to rationalize precisely the kind of crimes it purports to prevent: Pre-emptive agression brought against people who, at that moment at least, present no peril to the on-going peace. That is, NAP exists to “license” coercive post hoc “retaliatory” “justice” – even though the proponents of NAP know this cannot be justified under any conception of either equal rights or voluntaryism.

People who live in fear cannot conceive of any means of resolving disputes except force, so they will contort their minds in whatever bizarre shapes they think necessary to avoid admitting that they are the bad guys.

Which of these words did he object to? None of them. What got his easily-gotten goat was my observation that he is “aggressively unreadable.” This is obviously so. His purpose in writing is to overawe, overwhelm and intimidate. This is the entire “debate” strategy of the Cautious/Incandescent – baffle ’em with bullshit – but Doolittle’s online pugilism illuminates the path Cautious tyranny must always take: Dominance by relentless vindictive retribution.

In name-checking him, I equated him with “Rand, Rothbard or Nozick,” but decidedly not in a nice way. It seemed fair to me at the time – not being not-nice, but simply acknowledging that my (to-me redundant) entry into this particular fray had been brought about by Doolittle, to whose Facebook post I linked.

He brought nothing new to my end of this discussion, so I easily could have left him out. At first, I wished I had, since Curt Doolittle’s sole objective in writing so aggressively unreadably seems to be to (more…)

Why do you have the same disputes with the same people in the same way every time? What can you do differently to achieve better results?

My empathy-based reinterpretation of the DISC personality profile is the game theory of human behavior. We illuminate that notion in this week’s Church of Splendor homily, dissecting recurring conflicts to show how they proceed predictably from the DISC profiles of the combatants.

The chart shown below is a scorecard for every dispute you have ever had in an on-going relationship – how the fight started, and how it ping-pinged back and forth in steadily-escalating aggressive displays:

That chart will tell you how your conflicts will proceed – today and forever – if you are thoughtless in your approach to them. What’s the solution? Think!

From October 11, 2015. RTFM or see the movie.

I pay particular attention to the very young and the very old.

I like children because they have not yet learned how to lie comprehensively. Abstract deception is one of the sine qua non attributes of the fully-human state of consciousness – and yet another thing dancing bears can never do – but it’s my least favorite arrow in the conceptual quiver.

And I attend to the elderly because they embody the lifelong practical consequences of habituated probity or deceit. Nature is just, so time wounds all heels, but time also seasons goodness into sweetness.

Can there be a single, easily-implemented key to lifelong happiness?

Surely the answer is yes: Love your self.

But to do that, as we’ve noted, you must make your self lovable, fueling your mind with the hope that your hard work will pay off.

Can you do that alone?

For a while, as a young adult, but the evidence of the elderly argues that you can’t do it forever.

Perhaps I’m conflating unlike things, since the fate of the solitary old person was generally sealed by too much deceit, not too much solitude. Even so, the overwhelming number of the very happy old people I meet are very happily married.

Yesterday I met a couple who take the prize for lifelong happiness together.

They were walking side-by-side holding hands, which only children, the newly-romantic and the happily-coupled do. But they were also connected in another way: She had an oxygen-supplementation line – and he was carrying her tank.

A simple enough thing – chivalry or common courtesy, certainly no huge burden. But it was marriage near the end of life in a way you would not have seen it when those two were younger: They are there for each other, and they cannot be apart as long as they are connected by that skinny, transparent oxygen line.

When you are young, you think you can get away with lying to yourself, but this is just because the consequences of your deception have not caught up with you yet. Older people (more…)

The Non-Agression Principle (NAP) is merely a sentiment, much alike to the Golden Rule. But it is (putatively) socially-restrictive, where “do-unto-others” is reflexively unilateral. NAP is an attempt to induce by magic yet another Social Contract – asserted unilaterally by you yet somehow binding on me and everyone else. I dealt with all that a long time ago in Meet the Third Thing.

But: There is an underlying ontological reality to NAP: The mutually-assured destruction (MAD) that adult men communicate to each other by means of the nod of acknowledgement.

If you imagine two strangers meeting in isolation, the thing that engenders and sustains the peace between them, and which makes overtures toward mutually-beneficial cooperation possible in due course, is the conviction on the part of each of them that they are evenly matched – approximately equal in ferocity, martial prowess and weaponry. By means of a glance followed by a quick nod, each of them communicates these ideas:

• I see you.

• You see me.

• I have values I will die to defend.

• I am prepared in body, mind and emotional commitment to kill you, if necessary, even if I die in the process.

• Ergo, we should be friends, or at least non-combatants, instead.

(This is a very Driven mothertongue expression, incidentally, a contingent affectionate display: “I will do my best to love you if you do your best to love me back.”)

When the parties are unequally matched – as with a bully encountering an untouchable or thugs plucking a ripe teenage girl – crime ensues, NAP be damned. What makes peace (and the concomitant plenty) possible is not NAP but MAD.

So when Rand says, “The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from social relationships” – she is talking out her ass. It is the mutual and simultaneous pre-emptive assertion of the threat of violence that creates the peace necessary to negotiate any further fruits of that peace. To the extent that it relies on either Rand (more…)