The New New Thing asserts:

You think your car radio is broken because it doesn’t display the name of the song and the artist. You tap a word on a paperback and wonder why the definition doesn’t automatically pop up. You swipe a digit across the screen of your cell phone and all you get are fingerprint smudges . . . Our touchscreen existence has literally rewired our brains . . .

Yes!

What shall we name this New New Thing that literally reWires our brains?

iPavlov.

Hey, kids, it’s not the technology that makes you; it’s the thoughtfulness.

reWired is only Low WATT zombies ambling along the Peripheral Route, Cue-ing along, Ding-Donging a song.

Again, Whitehead says it nicely.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

This is getting too strange.

I observed a recent Wall Street story that was a near perfect match for a much older Wall Street story from a book by ‘Adam Smith’ (the pseudonym for George Goodman) called “The Money Game.”  Both featured young quants, computers, and confidence.  The more things change . . .

Now, today, this NYT story about cocoa.

In a stroke, a hedge fund manager here named Anthony Ward has all but cornered the market in cocoa. By one estimate, he has bought enough to make more than five billion chocolate bars.

Holy Harmonics, Batman!  This repeats, chapter and verse, another story from ‘Adam Smith,’ on the Great Cocoa Caper.  Smith outlines his involvement in a complex trading scheme with cocoa futures in the 1970s.  He, too, thought he had cornered the cocoa market and stood to reap a whirlwind of profit, but stronger forces and cooler heads prevailed.  Mr. Smith and his partners found themselves inheriting a different kind of whirlwind instead.

Right now, everyone is admiring the newest Cocoa King, but he hasn’t cashed in his winnings just yet because this is the futures market, baby, and you never win in the present.  Time will tell which way the wind blows.  But, Mr. Ward is apparently following the same strategy of Smith et al. back in the 1970s.  The big pay day bet on cocoa is to go long on disaster:  Rain!  Revolution!  Pestilence!

Wait for October.

In the meantime, worry about sunny days, friendly relations, and, off-stage, the Big Boys who don’t bet on cocoa, but who are in the chocolate business.

As Mark Twain observed, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”  Given the rhymes to “The Money Game” and “SuperMoney” I wonder what the future holds.

Just as All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere, so too:  All Bad Investing Is Sincere.

Observe a model of the Before and the After.

“It’s part of the whole outfit,” says Ms. Benson, a 25-year-old assistant to a music manager. Wearing the Booty Pop brand of underwear, which contain egg-shaped foam pads to plump up the posterior, “I look better, I feel better, and as a result, I act better,” she says.

The Liking Cue from CLARCCS, right?

You do see this is a persuasion example, don’t you?

Booty Pop is actually a pretty good persuasion metaphor, too, so let’s note that.

You find persuasion in the strangest places.  Consider this book review by Holly Morris of “No Way Down” written by Graham Bowley about the worst loss of life in a mountain climb at K2 during August 2008.

Holly Morris appears to suggest that Groupthink was a persuasive problem in this event and that because the climbers succumbed to this, they made fatal decisions.  Based only on the review information plus other publicly available information about this disaster, I am dubious about the analysis of Groupthink.  Some people think that when you observe a number of people talking together and there then follows a bad consequence, you’ve got Groupthink and this is not true.

Groupthink requires a small group of 8-15 people with a long history of contact and decision-making who experience high levels of cohesion in the group.  Simply stated, the social and emotional functions of such groups become more prominent than task functions.  When this arises, Groupthink acts as a WATTage switch that throws everyone into a Biased High WATT processing mode that leads people to make the data fit a conclusion rather than follow the data to a conclusion as operates in Objective High WATT processing.  The Bias points them toward maintaining high cohesion.

As described in this book, it is hard to argue that the 19 people who attempted K2 in August 2008 were a cohesive group under the required definition of Groupthink.  If only because of language differences between nationalities (Koreans, Dutch, Americans, Serbian, for example), it is hard to call these people, cohesive.  They certainly worked together and coordinated during the climb, but that does not make them a cohesive group under the Groupthink concept.  It is unlikely that these people decided to act as they did TO MAINTAIN GROUP COHESION which is the driving factor in Groupthink.

Given all of the factors operating in this disaster, Holly Morris’s claim of Groupthink is more likely due not to the reality of the disaster, but to the reality of reviewing books.  Morris is observing the persuasion psychology of an outside collection of actors with the outcome of the event already known.  She can see all the “mistakes” the climbers made not because she’s smarter than the climbers or not under the sway of persuasion forces, but because she knows what happens and can reason backwards.  “People died in the future, so they must have made mistakes in the past, now let’s find the mistakes!”

It strikes me as entirely reasonable that if these climbers had been alone in their smaller national groups (no other national climbing teams were on the mountain), it’s likely they would have made many of the same decisions.  The risk of death is already part of the equation and simply by being on the mountain, any climber has already accepted that as a possibility.  Some of the fatalities clearly had nothing to do with group effects.  One fell when not secured to a line.  Others were killed in avalanches.  Certainly none of these people would have been on the mountain at that moment if they had known what would happen, as Holly Morris does.  But, they didn’t.

I’ve noted the misuse of Groupthink before.  It appears that poorly read people have glommed onto a term that has an explicit technical meaning that they then stretch, pull, and wrap around whatever meaning they prefer as if they’re using a Gladwell coinage like “tipping point” or “blink” rather than something from the peer review literature.

Doing persuasion like a NYT scientist, when you see several people who are talking to each other and something bad then happens, you’ve got Groupthink.  That, however, fails the most basic test.  You need well established groups with a clear prior history of contact, then add in that high level of cohesion.  The combination of the number of targets and strong relational commitment to the group is what creates that Biased High WATT processing which produces bad decisions.

A better explanation for the behavior of the climbers is found in a persuasion concept that Morris describes, but does not name.  Morris closes her review with what appears to be a sad answer to her concerns about Groupthink.  Morris looks at the horrible loss of life, eleven people, and thinks that no one should want to climb K2 again.  She even doubts whether survivors would try it again.  But, she ruefully observes:

When Bowley asks one survivor, Alberto Zerain, what it would take to go back to K2, “he pushed back his chair and clenched his fist demonstratively. ‘I would go back now!’ he said, in a surprisingly loud voice, gazing through the window as if the mountain were already calling him.”

Here, I think we can see a likely example of dissonance in operation.  When you suffer for what you love, you often strengthen your love rather than change your beliefs or behaviors in the face of that punishment.  Here’s a man who survived the worst climbing accident in memory with eleven deaths in one climb.  And, he wants to try it again!

Outside observers looking at all this information, tend to use the most obvious persuasion principle here from Reinforcement Theory.  If you get a good consequence, keep going.  If you get a bad consequence, quit.  Thus, any one who nearly dies doing something and sees other people die doing it, must follow the correct rules of persuasion and walk away, right?

If you are an observer, probably, yes.  But, if you are an actor doing what you love, then the Principles of Reinforcement Theory do not apply the same way.  Instead, as you climb the mountain peak, you may also climb the dissonance trail.

“The Great Gatsby” is a difficult novel that successfully polarizes readers, especially ones who take it seriously. That marks great literature. When serious readers react oppositely to the same work, you know you are looking at good, if not great, art. Please note, too, that the range of reviews today mirrors the range of reviews that greeted this book when it arrived new in bookstores over 80 years ago. You can easily search those then-current reviews on the Internet for your own amusement and instruction and once again be surprised over how little people change. For some of us, “The Great Gatsby” is a wonder, while it leaves others wondering at us.

To describe briefly the novel: Set in the American 1920s at the height of a stock market boom in the Roaring Twenties, this novel is narrated by Nick Carraway, a wealthy, young Ivy League graduate who’s learning the bond business on Wall Street. Nick tells us about his life at the time as it connects with a second cousin, Daisy Buchanan, from Louisville, who is married to the fabulously and formidably wealthy Tom Buchanan. Tom and Nick schooled together at Yale where Nick had an uneasy relationship with the larger, wealthier, and crueler Tom Buchanan. The story unfolds with Nick, Daisy, Tom, and an attractive female golf pro, Jordan Baker, out on the glistening lawns of the wealthy sections of Long Island. Fold in Tom’s mistress, Myrtle Wilson and her clueless, but devoted husband, George, and we have a strong story, but nothing about this Gatsby guy. Only when we are well into the story do we hear about the title character, Jay Gatsby, and he is slowly brought into plot and character development. Gatsby has been driving this novel from the beginning, but we don’t know that. We learn in subtle, indirect fashion that Daisy and Gatsby have a mutual past that neither our narrator, Nick, nor her husband, Tom, discern or know. And in that past connection we grasp the proximate, animating force of the novel: Gatsby loved Daisy then and loves her now. The novel unfolds as Daisy learns that Gatsby owns a mansion across the bay from her estate. The old lovers cross paths again – one forcing the reunion, the other gliding into it – and we have all the action that will drive the remainder of the novel. I reveal nothing more and observe: The novel is simple and obvious, a story of wealthy, sophisticated people in boom times, with a narrator watching a married couple that has romantic rivals.

The basic plot and character in part explain why serious readers can be so seriously divided over “The Great Gatsby.” Virtually everyone who dislikes the novel finds it to be simplistic, boring, and obvious. Gee whiz, let’s try to get interested in people who have everything in life yet have trouble doing anything in life well. Tom and Daisy have it all, yet are stupid, shallow, and thoughtless people. Gatsby at least strives for something better and while he achieves great wealth, notoriety, and popularity, he, too, suffers from problems that should be easy to solve given his talents and resources. Jordan Baker, the female golf pro, is successful, famous, and attractive, but alas she can’t make her life work. And, Nick, our narrator, seems to observe everything well, except for himself. All in all, we have a cast of characters who warrant scorn, dismissal, and contempt.

And yet, other serious readers see Gatsby as a great novel, a work of art. How?

Start first with a quality that almost all serious readers notice and admire: The writing. Fitzgerald writes romantic sentences with a Hemingway edge. His words are at once beautiful and descriptive. Even readers who overall disparage the book, heed the writing, and marvel at it. The voice is unique, aesthetic, and sharp. Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s finest writing and certainly some of the best writing in English anytime. But writing skill alone will not save this book for some serious readers.

What earns this disdain, I think, is found in the deceptive simplicity of the book. At a genuine level of analysis the story is rather easy to grasp, understand, and evaluate. Especially if you are reading this book under requirement as it appears many students experience, the psychological demands of the classroom (it’s required, a specific timeline, deadlines for completing various chapters, assignments in class or for homework on the book, etc.) I think lead many readers into the worst outcome for a reading class – you read to survive the course rather than for your own simple entertainment and education. Under these conditions, the obvious, simple, and designed elements of “The Great Gatsby” attract immediate attention in the short term demands of required reading and lead some readers to obvious, simple, and designed conclusions about the book. If you’ve “had” to read Gatsby, give it a year, and try once again. It’s not a maturity issue. It’s a motivation issue: Read it for yourself on your own terms.

If you read for yourself, you can reflect on complexities in the book. Realize first that Fitzgerald writes differently about Tom and Daisy than he does for Nick or Jordan Baker, or the minor, but important characters like Myrtle and George Wilson, but most especially for Gatsby. With Tom and Daisy, Fitzgerald tends to offer direct and immediate observations of their behavior and thoughts as if he is looking them right now with a God’s eye view and telling us about them. He really gets under the skin with Tom and Daisy. With Gatsby, by contrast, most of the writing is a narrative recounting of the past that is cloudy, perhaps misremembered, and operates as description with little interpretation or with contradiction from an unreliable narrator (Nick). This makes the characters of Tom and Daisy seem like high quality photos while Gatsby comes off more like a portrait done by an Impressionist painter: Clearly a portrait, but with shadows and no sharp edges. Tom and Daisy are objects. Gatsby is all subject and he becomes a Rorschach test allowing us to project ourselves onto him.

Next, you need to be alert to absolutely crucial plot actions that are briefly presented and can be easily missed. The climatic action of the story in particular requires the reader to do a lot of work and keep certain actions in mind through a long series of character reactions and developments. Recall the scene late in the book that takes place in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Who’s in the scene? What do they say to each other? How are relationship conflicts resolved? Then, the characters move rapidly out of the Plaza Hotel and drive back to West and East Egg in separate cars. How do those car rides manifest behaviorally the relationship conflicts resolved earlier in the Hotel? Stated another way, in the Hotel we hear conflict and resolution. From the car rides we see how that conflict and resolution play out in action. This sequence is the ultimate plot point for the novel that drives interpretation. You need to read it carefully.

Finally, you need to relate what we hear and see regarding relationship conflict and resolution with the interpretation and understanding of Jay Gatsby. You’ll recall that Tom and Daisy are bright, detailed, and sharp characters while Gatsby is vague, shadowed, and blurry. You can try to understand Gatsby through the events that occur following the car rides back to the Eggs. For you see, the whole point of the book is in what happens to Gatsby and what happens to Gatsby is caused by his character. (So, Fitzgerald exemplifies that maxim that all writers steal and that good writers steal from the best which in this case is Fitzgerald stealing from Heraclitus!)

For many people the basic theme of “The Great Gatsby” is this: Be careful what you wish for. I think at a simple level of analysis this is true. At a deeper level (one that follows my suggestions above) I would refine that theme into this: Be careful what you aspire to. For me, this novel is a great cautionary meditation on the American Dream and its less pleasant possibilities. In positive form, the American Dream is that you can be more than you started with. That explains in part why this book is often required for younger readers in high school or college who are taking their first real steps toward realizing their own American Dream. Fitzgerald offers Gatsby as a caution to those of us who think that aspiration past our beginnings is a good thing, a desirable thing, and the point of ambition. Everyone in this novel aspires to be more than they seem to be or who they are. Everyone in this novel suffers loss, failure, or disaster. No one in this novel leaves with any awareness of why they failed. Yet most of the characters can be described as either great challengers to the American Dream or else already living the American Dream. How is it possible for such failure to occur?

In my eyes, the answer is found in the last sentence of the novel: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Aspiration moves “against the current.” Ambition motivates us not to a positive manifestation of the Dream, with the Dream as the Vision or Goal of one’s life, but rather ambition motivates us to a negative manifestation of the Dream, with Dream as Fantasy or Psychosis or UnReality. And for those of us who aspire, we will find ourselves “borne back ceaselessly into the past” a modern Sisyphus doomed to push the stone uphill to the crest only to see it roll down to the valley every time.

That is a soul-chilling thought. Isn’t this kind of ambition a good thing? Don’t all good parents aspire for their children to aspire? Doesn’t it all fall down if we don’t aspire? It is not that anyone in the novel aspires badly or stupidly or illegally, but rather that they aspire at all is the root and branch of their failure. Here, “The Great Gatsby” argues that it is ambition itself that will cause people to fail and worse still to fail without insight and repair, for as long as you continue to aspire you will continue to fail.

This is an interesting and heuristic interpretation. First, it breaks free of the simple and obvious surface appearances and misdirections that divert some readers: It’s the 1920s and irrelevant; it’s about a bunch of spoiled white folks; it’s about the vita loca. Clearly, there’s a lot more going on here and it requires careful, thoughtful reading and reflection. Second, it explains why Gatsby is still appealing to so many people even after 80 years. It turns out that we are still living in a Modern age and the current Postmodern foolishness is explained by the past: Gatsby and Tom and Daisy and Nick would call themselves Postmodern today. The American Dream here is the defining element of Modernism and the fact that we’re still aspiring the same old way like Jay Gatsby connects with us at a deep level. Third, it reinforces the perceived greatness of the novel that many readers see and continue to see. This is not only a well written, well structured, pretty novel, it also addresses eternal human nature and the repetitive futility we experience in life. Gatsby is dramatic philosophy, a better written Platonic dialog.

Or so I think.

P.S.  Where’s the persuasion in this?  Persuasion requires a kind of aspiration in the source.  You don’t persuade to pass the time, but to achieve another goal.  The desire to achieve goals can be seen as aspiration.  Further, persuasion is certainly a fellow traveler with aspiration.  Perhaps, the desire to persuade is also the mark of Fitzgerald’s warning about aspirations?