Category Archives: Ruminations

Books, Career, Ruminations

George Washington and The Rules

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If you follow other things I’ve written, you know I’m a fan of Rules. Or rather, lists of Rules. My list of professional rules, somewhat inspired by Gibb’s Rules (from NCIS), my Leadership Rules from the Ancient Greeks. Fred Harvey, creator of one of the earliest travel companies and the first US restaurant chain, and his rules. Rules give us things to fall back on when it’s unclear how to proceed.

Recently I took a tour of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, and saw that he had his own rules, cribbed from 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, which is based on a set of rules composed by French Jesuits in 1595.

I was sufficiently intrigued by Washington’s history and the manner in which people respected him, that I realized I did not know enough about him. Washington was widely respected for that quality we refer to today as “gravitas“. As a result I am reading David McCullough’s 1776, which so far is good fun and highly informative. (I’m running a public reading on my social reading app Bookship, tap the link below to join me!)

1776

Bookship is a social reading app that lets people share their reading experiences.

The Rules are good fun and a quick read (the complete list is here: http://www.foundationsmag.com/civility.html).

Some of them are from another age. Some of them are laugh-out-loud funny (“When in Company, put not your Hands to any Part of the Body, not usually Discovered.“, “In the Presence of Others Sing not to yourself with a humming Noise, nor Drum with your Fingers or Feet.“).

Some of them are wildly topical – masks and social distancing, anyone? (“If You Cough, Sneeze, Sigh, or Yawn, do it not Loud but Privately; and Speak not in your Yawning, but put Your handkerchief or Hand before your face and turn aside.“, “Shake not the head, Feet, or Legs roll not the Eyes lift not one eyebrow higher than the other wry not the mouth, and bedew no mans face with your Spittle, by approaching too near him when you Speak.”)

Some management lessons are to be found:

  • Being to advise or reprehend any one, consider whether it ought to be in public or in Private; presently, or at Some other time in what terms to do it & in reproving Show no Sign of Cholar but do it with all Sweetness and Mildness.
  • Wherein you reprove Another be unblameable yourself; for example is more prevalent than Precepts.
  • Never express anything unbecoming, nor Act against the Rules Moral before your inferiors.
  • Detract not from others neither be excessive in Commanding.
  • Undertake not what you cannot Perform but be Careful to keep your Promise.
  • Let thy carriage be such as becomes a Man Grave Settled and attentive to that which is spoken. Contradict not at every turn what others Say.

And lastly a few good reminders of personal behavior, not unlike things Marcus Aurelius might say.

  • Let your Conversation be without Malice or Envy, for ‘is a Sign of a Tractable and Commendable Nature: And in all Causes of Passion admit Reason to Govern.
  • Speak not injurious Words neither in Jest nor Earnest Scoff at none although they give Occasion.
  • Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

The rules are a quick read, even if many of them are from another age. Good fun. And since there’s an election coming up, I’ll leave you with a view into Washington’s campaign tactics 🙂

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Ruminations

On politics

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COVID has led to an even crazier polarization of politics than we’ve seen in an already polarized Trump era. Even the slightest of issues around COVID, which one would hope would be treated as a public health issue and not a cudgel to bash one’s opponent, are politicized. I excuse neither the left nor the right here, I see them as equal offenders.

The writer H. L. Mencken has many pithy quotes about politics, but there’s an exchange in Howard Fast’s book Being Red that really captures how I feel about politics. Via Real Clear Politics

Fast would run for Congress on the American Labor Party ticket, write frequently for the Daily Worker, win the Stalin Peace Prize, be temporarily blacklisted in Hollywood, hauled before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and jailed for contempt of Congress. In the late 1950s, he turned away from communism and wrote a book about the experience called “Being Red.”

In that memoir he relates an evocative encounter in late July 1948 at the Progressive Party convention, which he attended as a credentialed journalist and where he ran into one of his idols, H.L. Mencken. When Fast went to shake the great Baltimore Sun columnist’s hand, Mencken took it in both of his own hands and told him he’d just read “The American,” Fast’s novel based on the life of former Illinois Gov. John Peter Altgeld.

Mencken said that if he’d ever written anything that good, he’d “put down my pen with pleasure.” Howard Fast found this praise fulsome, but appreciated it nonetheless, and thanked Mencken, who then said, in reference to the Progressives, “Fast, what in hell’s name are you doing with this gang?”

“I tried to invent some clever reply, but all I could say was that it was a better place to be than at the Republican or Democratic convention,” Fast wrote. “This was as far from a bright or witty rejoinder as one could get, but I was tongue-tied, and the thought of preaching to Mencken or haranguing him was inconceivable. It was not just that I admired him and loved the way he wrote and thought, but he had just given me the best straightforward compliment I had ever received. I had no wish to challenge him. I owed him too much.”

But Mencken wasn’t finished.

“There’s a better place than that,” he said. “With yourself.”

“I can’t put politics aside,” Fast protested.

“Put it aside?” Mencken snorted. “Hell, no. Henry Louis Mencken is a party of one. Do you understand me? You’re a party of one. You don’t put politics aside; you taste it, smell it, listen to it, write it. You don’t join it. If you do, these clowns will destroy you as surely as the sun rises and sets.”