Ep30 -- What's It All About?

 My friend, Jill had an extended layover in LA after an amazing, almost month-long hiking adventure in Western Australia.  She told me that since she was one of the few Americans in her group, she was an object of curiosity. And given that this is an election year, pity as well.  They couldn't understand why we have an extensively democratic system in which barely half of all voting-age citizens actually vote.  In Australia, once you're registered to vote, voting is compulsory. And they get at least 90% turnout every time.  It also helps that election day is a Saturday and there are barbecues and bake sales to raise money for school or church groups. 

Of course, a lot of Americans would balk at the idea of mandatory voting. I don't want the government telling me what I can and can't do. But what we don't think about is the positive changes that could come from it, beyond just getting more people to vote.  Because if everyone votes, then politicians need to convince everyone to vote for them. Not just the preset selection of people who already agree with them, while they suppress the votes of those who don't.  If you can't suppress votes easily because voting is mandatory, you're going to need to change your message. So actually doing something that on the surface might seem to limit our freedom, can ultimately result in the reality of a stronger, more representative democracy. 

It really just comes down to which view of freedom seems more grown up: the one where you get to avoid doing something, that's a civic responsibility or the one that actually results in a strengthening of the fabric of civic life.  So this week, I want to talk a little bit about cultivating the habit of imagining and considering the value of alternatives to the one reality we're always presented with, that water we swim around in, which appears to be so ingrained and immutable that we just accept it as it is. Stay tuned.

 I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about how we've all been conned into accepting a man-made culture that's out of sync with our human nature and how we can fight back and put the kind back into humankind. 

But first, a word about a sponsor.  This week's episode of The Great Ungaslighting is not brought to you by Pantone. Now that's not Pantene the shampoo, and it's not pannetone, the sweet Italian holiday bread dotted with candied orange lemon zest and raisins. I've got no problem with that particular fruitcake, but Pantone the company that controls the color standard used by designers and artists worldwide, that's a different story. 

Honestly until recently, I never really thought about Pantone much except to be mildly amused by some new color creation of theirs that had made the news like minion yellow or Nespressos new Mandarin orange, which according to Nespresso is director of brand communications, "plays a crucial role in how people interact with their coffee experience." Ooh, can't wait to try that one.  But then I heard a recent story on NPR Planet Money called "The Company that Owns Colors." 

now I'm not a designer or an illustrator. For those folks,

Pantone is a crucial part of their daily working lives because it's the one standard that everyone in the world can use to talk to each other about color.  Somewhere on a shelf in their offices is the Pantone color book that cost them anywhere from around $3,000 to upwards of $10,000.  It helps to understand how important that book is when you realize what life was like before it.  Back then if you wanted a certain color on your brochure or fabric, you'd have to bring in an example.  Clients would bring in a magazine clipping, a leaf, or even the family dog and say match that color.  In the 1960s print shop employee, Larry Herbert envisioned a solution and set out to create a universal language of color that everyone could use to speak to each other more efficiently.  And he did it. The result was Pantone, a hugely successful proprietary collection of color swatches

that is the standard used to this day by the graphic arts industry.  Now that in itself, isn't a problem. It's actually the solution to a problem. Yes. Pantone is effectively a monopoly,

 but that's kind of why it works. The thing about a standard is for it to work everybody has to use it. It has to be a monopoly to be effective.  So I don't really have a problem with Pantone just because it's a monopoly. That's just the nature of the game.  The problem arises when it starts to abuse its monopoly position and remind you why most standards are controlled by government agencies or entire industries, not just one company. 

You may remember a couple of weeks ago, I talked about how Adobe changed its software model from a one-time purchase per version to an ongoing subscription model. Well, Pantone has been integrated with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for years. And I think you can see where this is going.  In 2022 graphic artists the world over woke up to find that all of the Pantone colors they'd used in their Adobe creations had suddenly turned to black.  Pantone had seen how lucrative the subscription model was for Adobe and decide to try it itself.  So if all those artists wanted to get their colors back, it would now cost them $15 a month. And that's the problem. It's not just that Pantone is a monopoly per se.

It's what happens when it abuses that monopoly power.  In the end, Adobe users, got their colors back, but there are no longer official Pantone colors. 

There was one line in that Planet Money episode that revealed how people within a monopoly view the world very differently from people outside of it.  Richard Herbert is Larry's son. He worked for Pantone for years, ultimately as president of the company. When asked about whether or not Pantone is wielding its monopoly power unfairly, Richards said, "You don't have to use Pantone. You could use whatever system works the best. Pantone became a de facto standard because it worked the best."  Now that may be true. Pantone may have been the best system 50 years ago, but maybe not. What we know for sure is that it was the first and Larry Herbert used his hard work and smarts to get his system adopted worldwide.  But that idea, that because it's a monopoly, it must be the best, that's enough of a logical stretch that it gets people in trouble. It causes people outside monopolies to give undue deference to the company holding the monopoly, and causes the monopolies themselves to make arrogant decisions that hurt their customers, like the one Pantone made toward Adobe users.  Now, I'm not saying Pantone should open up the market to all challengers and have to defend its turf year after year. I'm just suggesting that Richard Herbert should have a little more humility and appreciate the great, good fortune that he inherited from his dad's very useful and lucrative creation.  And lest you think Pantone might be taking a huge financial hit by no longer having their colors in Adobe graphic software, don't forget that every time they come up with some cute new pop-culture-tie-in color or announce a new "Color of the Year," all of those Pantone color books sitting in graphic design offices all around the world are now suddenly obsolete.  Not a bad little business model. 

And we are back. 

I don't know how this started, what video I clicked on, or meme I lingered over for a nanosecond too long, but my current Facebook feed is inundated with video clips from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.  I loved both of those shows and haven't watched them in a while, so I'm enjoying watching every clip that pops up on my feed. And of course that tickles the algorithm so I will see even more clips from the shows.  It's actually been kind of fun to see how this social media trend impacts my offline AKA real-world life.  As viewers of Breaking Bad will recall, Walt Whitman plays a crucial part in the narrative, especially since Walt Whitman and Walter White share the same initials, which led to this great moment:

Hank: Hey, let me, let me, let me, let me show you something.  Right here at the, uh, here at the top it says, uh, to W. W. My star, my perfect silence.  W. W.  I mean, who do you figure that is, huh? Woodrow Wilson?   Willy Wonka?  Walter White?

 Walter: You got me.

And of course, it was Gale's inscription on his gift copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass that ultimately blew the case wide open.  So at some point a clipped Whitman quote, which comes from the preface to Leaves of Grass appeared in my feed. It says "re-examine all that you have been told. And dismiss whatever insults your soul."  

I immediately sent that quote to my older son who is a songwriter for him to tuck away for some future lyric. And I've been thinking about that line ever since.  It really is a great litmus test to carry around with you.  To consciously look at things that have become so normal and ubiquitous as to become completely invisible and ask yourself, what's really going on here?

What is this thing all about? And does it insult my soul? And they don't have to be big earth-shattering occurrences. They could really just annoy your soul. Like one thing I noticed during the Olympics broadcasts, not really the constant ad breaks. I mean, I get it. The broadcaster needs to make money. But it was the constant pharmaceutical ads and what they represent.  I also get that drug companies need to turn a profit and keep investing in R and D for new drugs. But the fact that they found it cost-effective to advertise at the Olympics, directing those ads at patients, that says a lot about our healthcare system and none of it is really good.  So while getting rid of pharmaceutical ads wouldn't do much to change our healthcare system. If we had an efficient working healthcare system. I'm guessing we probably wouldn't see much in the way of pharmaceutical ads.  And of course, you may be thinking, well, little thought exercises like that might be nice and all, but what difference do they really make? The difference they make for me is that they remind me daily that our reality is created.  Things don't just magically happen the way they do, they are caused by human beings and institutions comprised of human beings, making things work the way they want them to work.  And our understanding of reality is constantly changing even though much of the time, we don't notice it.  But every once in a while, we can't help but notice it. If anyone wants proof of that, just think back a lifetime ago when Joe Biden was steadfastly asserting that he was the nominee and he had no intention whatsoever of stepping down.  Now think about how your sense of reality, your emotional assessment of the national vibe, regardless of where you stand politically, has shifted over the past few weeks.  It's like the jaws effect. The fact that he single event can so overtly and dramatically alter the public consciousness, which also suggests that there are countless smaller events that also change things on a much smaller scale.  So keep doing those little thought experiments, try to really see what's going on around you and listen to how those in power describe what's going on. And if it feels like it insults your soul or your intelligence or contradicts what you see with your own eyes, then dismiss it.  And after that dig a little deeper. Find out why things are the way they are, why that person was espousing such obvious bullshit. And find the counter-arguments that nurture your soul and your intelligence.  

BREAK

You may remember a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about Milton Friedman and his contention, that societies that put freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.  And you got to ask yourself, what the hell is he talking about? 

It's so transparently, untrue. How was he ever taken seriously?  Well, he was an economist. So he was thinking in purely economic terms and for him, freedom meant freedom from government interference and restraint, the ultimate example of that interference being the Soviet system. So in his mind, if the Soviet system is the worst than the polar opposite must be the best, toward the ultimate goal of zero government interference. 

Of course, that's like saying if one dose of a drug is good then 50 doses must be 50 times better. Of course, the world doesn't actually work that way.  And that's ultimately the question we want to be asking when people explain the essential nature of things that actually insult our souls.  Does the world actually work that way? Or are you just saying it does because it works best for you?  Or you lack the imagination to see other ways it could work better for everyone.  

I want to wrap up this week with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut.  He was doing an interview on PBS in 2005 when he was almost 83 years old.  And the interviewer asked him to recount a story from his most recent book about going to buy an envelope.  His wife tells him, well, you're not a poor man. Why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?  And Vonnegut pretends not to hear her. And he goes out to get an envelope.  The question is why. And this is his answer. He says,  "because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.  I meet a lot of people and see some great-looking babes and a fire engine goes by and I give them a thumbs up.  And I asked a woman what kind of dog that is. And the moral of the story is we are here on earth to fart around.  And of course the computers will do us out of that, and what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we are dancing animals. We love to move around."  

And remember Vonnegut was an old man at that time, he'd seen a lot and a lot of the most horrible things we humans can do to each other. And after all that, what did he believe was our essential nature?  We are dancing animals who are here to fart around with each other.  I'd say anyone who purports to know what's best for us as individuals and as a society who doesn't give those traits paramount importance in their calculations is insulting our souls and should be summarily dismissed.  

Well, that's it for this week. If you liked this episode, please share it with anyone else you think might also enjoy it.  And until next time be kind to yourself, cut each other some slack, and use your f*king turn signal.