Personality, Politics and Progress

Canadian clinical psychologist, professor, best selling author and now, world renowned intellect and lecturer, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, has often pointed out the relationship between temperament and political persuasion. His premise goes something like this; the conservative temperament leans toward wanting to maintain order and structure and therefore is averse to change while the left leaning temperament wishes to weight the game in favour of keeping open boundaries between things to facilitate creativity, change, and hopefully progress. While I believe this view has a certain utility, I believe it to be too narrow and simplistic. I am reluctant to point this out since I am an ignorant man; however, I think I can argue a more workable explanation for the weaknesses in Dr. Peterson's reasoning. I will begin by using my own peculiar temperament as an example.

"The left is perfectly capable of rigid orthodoxy toward their belief system while the right is perfectly capable of adapting policies to changing demands"

I am certainly not a conservative person in any real sense of the word. I am loud, brash and outgoing. I have a reputation for questioning arbitrary authority for good reason, I dislike it. I am also an erstwhile blues musician. My very nature is to look for alternative ways of assessing things to explore their validity. If there is a method, or a process, or an opportunity to aid my personal journey of discovery, I am more than willing to consider it. Even if this means that I must exchange my current ignorance and naivety in favour of a more realistic and informed view. Which is why it has been easier for me, perhaps for more than most, to pick up and leave where I am to explore diverse perspectives and places in an attempt to learn something, invariably mostly about myself. I have sacrificed to do this. I have given up what I have in favour of pursuing discovery and of obtaining something more valuable than I have at present. Almost invariably what I thought I would experience along the way was not what I have experienced, nor was what I thought I might gain the most valuable things I eventually gained. I have made enormous, costly blunders along the way due to my own stupidity, naivety and shortcomings. In spite of this I love structure as well. I simply despise people who wish to tear down the very foundations upon which such amazing human progress has been made. And because of this I tend toward a right leaning philosophical view of the world that will afford the individual the maximum possibility for liberty, which in my case might best be described as the Classical Liberalism first proposed during the Age of Enlightenment.  I abhor the state's inference with individual liberty because of its tendency toward collectivism, "group think" and authoritarianism.

"The path to knowable, quantifiable progress: Lean Science"

One of the many things which has engaged me in former incarnations of my life has been lean manufacturing coaching to ensure the firms for which I have consulted had substantive quality management systems. My older brother Garth, God rest him, was an expert in lean science. He sold Lean Six Sigma training for Motorola University in the Asia-Pacific Region out of Melbourne, Australia. He was presented with the prestigious JM Juran Award for Quality Excellence by AOQC in 1988, which is Australia's highest honour in that field of expertise https://www.aoq.net.au/awards/jm-juran-award/. I tread very lightly when making any claims of my own prowess when walking among giants since anything that I know about quality is the result of being well mentored by experts.


Eric Walker is another mentor who taught us well the following foundational principle of lean; "What he have today, whatever progress is to be made, is all based upon past progress. Quality systems are never revolutionary since real progress is always evolutionary". The Toyota Production System did not undo the Ford Production System, rather it built upon it. Eric was a late convert to quality and like all new converts had the zeal of such. Eric had retired as the Superintendent of my department only to return to us a few years later to train us as someone who had finally realized the value of "Team Kaizen" and applying lean science and problem solving to business.

There is yet another mentor and old friend to whom I owe at very least the courtesy of an entire paragraph; Pat Cowling, https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-cowling-69749914/?originalSubdomain=ca. Pat's unique and arcane field of expertise is "lean manufacturing in low volume environments". This science is particularly suited to locomotives and military vehicles production since they are produced in lower quantities than the mass production used by the automotive industry. Pat mentored me in 2008 while I was preparing the quality management system and training for an electrostatic painting firm which applied CARC coatings for the military, among other painting applications, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am quite certain that I learned far more than I was able to teach my clients during the eight months I was there. It was a very rewarding time for me personally and the project was a success. I made lasting friends in the West Michigan area, particular in their vibrant blues music scene.

Pat Cowling has an uncanny ability to analyze unwanted variation and arrive at solutions that save a great deal of money, time and unwanted variation, which is why he is in high demand today as a consultant largely to the military-industrial sector. He is also left leaning politically, although he certainly loves order. Also he is rather conservative by nature and dress although very outgoing as well.

"It isn't so easy to fit a personality type into a neat category since individuals are far too diverse. In fact, real diversity only exists at the level of the individual. This is oddly a fact Dr. Peterson often states in spite of his analysis of temperament and politics"

It was during my time in Grand Rapids that I had listened to the American federal election campaign with all of its bombast and rhetoric. This is also when I learned of the plans to reward corrupt and malfeasant banks by bailing them out. So the very institutions which had caused the financial crisis of 2008 were to be rewarded thereby indebting our children's children for their negligence, corruption and greed! The banking crisis had primarily been brought about by deregulation in the financial industry which permitted banks to engage in hedge fund trading with derivatives. Banks then demanded more mortgages to support the profitable sale of these derivatives. Weren't the "Dirty Thirties" enough for America and the Western World? I was appalled.

"To to find a possible solution we must first do a root cause analysis of the problem. We must understand that without integrity failure is inevitable!"

Enter Doug Ross, https://ca.linkedin.com/in/douglasross. Doug had worked with us during the 1998 Gen III V-8 engine launch at the St. Catharines General Motors Powertrain plant. We won a J.D. Power Award for that production launch beating even Toyota at their own game for the fastest start up of any engine plant in the world. Doug was our synergy guy. He was the fellow who could bring disparate parties together to find common ground thereby preventing managers from butting heads. When I retired from GM in 2005 Doug and I agreed that we would look at consulting together. I do not recall which of us reached out to the other as 2008 drew to a close but shortly thereafter we began to work on a new program to increase integrity in business which featured, "Inner Dialogue Training" similar to cognitive behaviour therapy which is geared to aligning managers to achieve more positive, productive and rewarding outcomes for them and their employees.

"What are we telling ourselves about our situation? Is the story we are telling ourselves helping us solve the problems with which we are confronted?"

The Inner Dialogue Training course we began working on had its unlikely origins on the Gaza Strip. We learned of a young female Lieutenant from the Israeli Army who had commanded a platoon patrolling Palestinians. Unsurprisingly they weren't having a very good time of it, however what is surprising is what happened next, according to the story I was told. The young officer began to ask the kids in her unit what they would rather have happen while out on patrol and like sane kids they began to tell her positive stories about interacting with people. Low and behold the more they told positive stories, the more they became a reality. A think tank in the US got wind of her success in altering unwanted outcomes and began to wonder if this method could not be developed, perfected and translated into other areas where such a change in perspective might serve to improve operational successes. So after the young lady had resigned her commission she was brought to the US to work on this. Doug in his typical curiosity to explore more effective tools to assist him with consulting put a team of us together to discover the real utility of inner dialogue training.

Enter my wife, Anne-Siri Walle. Here is a photo of her on deck watch as a young Lieutenant in the Royal Norwegian Navy. She has also served in their Coast Guard. Anne-Siri is one of the first of two women to graduate from the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy in Bergen and then went on to study at the Naval School of Staff. She did it because she is quicker, tougher, faster and better. Even in a country where egalitarianism is practically a religion it should be understood that navigating a previously uncharted course in waters traditionally sailed in by men was not easy for her. There were significant obstacles for her to overcome which have since assisted in created the thoroughly integrated Navy Norway has today. She resigned her commission at the pay grade of Commander after the birth of her son to return to civilian life to raise a family. This was also an enormous sacrifice for her since she was being vetted for senior, if not staff command. Nevertheless, when the children were old enough she eventually returned to work for the Defence Department as a Senior Adviser. During this time she got wind of the program on inner dialogue training via LinkedIn and became curious about it herself.

"The moment all things changed for the better but not how I had expected. If ever there is an object lesson in keeping an open mind and heart, this was it"

My particular role in Inner Dialogue Training was to act as a guinea pig. We had no experience or expertise in this field and none of us are psychologists. I must confess the best attempts of my colleagues to use this method on me were a dismal failure. I suspect that this is because they simply weren't asking the right questions to arrive at the root causes for my negative inner dialogue. I also believe that feelings of concern or unease over a particular situation is a sign that it is not merely a matter of how you look at the situation. There are real problems in life which must be solved. Life is bounded by suffering and infected by malice, and I have known my fair share of malicious human beings. It is also not useful to be naive about our own tendency toward passive-aggressive behaviour. We are all capable of reacting quite badly when all our buttons are pushed. It is best to incorporate our darker inner selves to use wisely as Carl Jung pointed out.

So, as I busied myself with lean training to be used on the shop floor, my colleagues busied themselves with developing inner dialogue training. Since I am an old shop floor guy; namely rude, crude and lewd, such esoteric matters were not my chief concern. I merely needed help in dealing with recalcitrant managers who don't see the value in giving their workers tools and information to do their jobs correctly the first time, or teach them problem solving methods to assist them with assigning documented corrective actions to first time quality issues. I would often warn managers several times about jerking their workers over and if my best advice was not heeded, I became angry. Workers after all are value added labour and deserve the support of their managers. Apparently my anger doesn't serve to correct managers' bad behaviour although I have yet to understand why. 🤣

This is where I knew Anne-Siri would have great utility. She was used to dealing with people who don't see the need for change or improvement. Oddly, in the most progressive societies, such as in Scandinavia, bureaucracies can become rigid and stultifying in their adherence to socially conforming orthodoxy. In the midst of this environment, for better or for worse (for her personal well being often worse), her attempts to push for process improvements or to criticize the consensus even by offering alternatives were viewed as "being difficult" at best and "subversive" at worst. It was under these circumstances that Anne-Siri sought to apply Doug's program. First she submitted to the training herself, then attempted to use it on a volunteer in Norway. Since said volunteer is a very dear friend of Anne-Siri's it is difficult for me to assess the efficacy of the course on her. Neither had Anne-Siri been sufficiently mentored in he application of the program.

I became a great admirer of Anne-Siri; of her forthrightness, her kindness and her sadly disregarded intelligence and talent. So, having fallen in love we decided that I should join her in Norway. I hoped,we both did, that we might sell the newly developed program in Norway but alas the program was met with stonewalling and disregard. It was next to impossible to explain its benefits in a place where people often deem themselves to be at the pinnacle of socio-economic success. Sadly this isn't the case, but they certainly believe it is.

"As Dr. Peterson has often pointed out, by nature humans are aiming creatures moving toward a goal from one point to another"

This is undoubtedly why we take such great pleasure in watching team sports where the goal is the at the opposite end of the field and a team works skillfully and cooperatively to reach it while the other team applies all of its efforts to prevent them. Humans are aiming creatures on the move always targeting a goal. This implies that the path to reach it requires a map. We need to develop our individual skills while working cooperatively as a team articulating and sharing the map forward. The path to our goals is seldom linear. It is circuitous in nature and full of challenges which might prevent us from scoring. And such is life. This is reality. In the face of these challenges lean science provides a way to chart a proper course we can all agree on. Process flow mapping assesses what can go wrong at each step of our journey to achieve our desired outcomes while allowing for mitigation of risk along the way. It may sound highly structured, and it is, but it also allows for the game (whatever the nature of the game be it playing football, building a car, or even running a government) to be knowable, quantifiable and provable with great leeway for change and adaptation. You cannot play an iterable game without rules because it is within the rules that true creativity will emerge.

"The left has many ideas at to what constitutes progress which are based on the orthodoxy of current leftist doctrine. This presents two problems i): is the progress defined by them an actual improvement? ii): Why are they so insistent on only talking about the goal without having a scientific method to achieve it?"

"The right has two problems as well. i): they often merely want to keep what once was without adapting to changing demands. ii): they fail to articulate real progress in a manner which appeals to win the support of the electorate"

This discontinuity virtually guaranteed a populist backlash which certainly explains Trump, Brexit and the "Yellow Vest" movement in France. It also speaks to what I have alluded before, that there is something very broken about a system which rewards corruption such as the bailout of 2008 to our current government's plan to give SNC Lavalin a "don't go to jail" card simply because they are deep in the Liberal Party's pocket, on the justifying further taxation when the taxes do not bring about the outcomes the government promised.

"Humans are the only creature that can lie to themselves and believe their own lies"

The greatest liars are the ones who are pathological enough to believe their own crap. This reality does not fit well into a simple definition of temperament since I am quite convinced there are pathologically lying conservatives as well and pathologically lying leftists. I think what may vary between the left and right is the nature of the lies they tell themselves. But, if I were to surmise based on my own experiences, I would assume the greater percentage of liars who believe their own shit are on the left for the simple reason modern leftist doctrine is so utterly unworkable and unfactual. It has become nothing even similar to the kind of socialism Orwell advocated, rather it is virtually identical to the versions he warned us about. We need to do some serious  problem solving and mapping as a society. The political elite have become a reflection of the irrationality of the postmodern university. This is occuring while perfectly rational professors like Doctors Stephen Hicks, Sir Roger Scruton and Jordan B Peterson are labelled as "controversial". Proof of such is that the institutions where they are tenured have issued them minatory and insolent warnings that they must change their opinions to suit to the will of the postmodern elite. It is time to reapply the proper rules of the game, namely rational, calm, open debate based upon sound reasoning. It is time to apply science to public discourse and leave the hyper-emotional nonsense currently exhibited by the cultural, academic and political elite to a dark chapter in our history when we momentarily lost the way on our journey toward actual, verifiable socio-economic progress.