Field Notes #19
My Culture Blind Spots
Alongside this Field Note is My Culture Snapshot. This time the red line is not one of the four vehicles at all. It is the signature at the top of the card the thing I am, rather than something I do.
SACRED COWS
I have no sacred cows. I don’t believe in them, and I don’t check for them. So I hit your sacred cow, and it's all hamburger for me. What is untouchable for the person across the table from you?
Five, at the Mindset Layer
The cover is the bell.
Living Skeptically — THE RED LINE. Extrinsic, goal-driven, respect-oriented, and a challenger of the status quo. Every shibboleth gets held to one standard: does it work? Does it help? I have learned the hard way that people never forget you touched the untouchable. You kill a sacred cow, and you pay for it forever. So this is the space I manually look over my shoulder for.
Vulnerability — checked, not deadly. The mala beads on every mirror, the angels either side of my screens those are placements, put there so I remember a person deserves dignity before they are a performer. I am task- and time-oriented. On time is late. So I check that I am not dehumanizing you into what you produce, or doing the same to myself.
Imperfection — THE SHRUG. I talk too much when unguarded, and I am unguarded often, because that is how trust gets built: I go first so you can mirror it back. I am too intense. Both are superpowers you are benefiting from right now. I have language for it — forgive me when it is my fault, sorry when it is not. If you cannot tolerate imperfection, that is on you, and it is easy to mark early.
Delight — checked, not deadly. I care about recognition, and I should. My business depends on my being a subject-matter expert with tangible return for you. I cannot shrug and be the dumb Irishman who never finished school. Not a red line, but it costs my family, so I check it.
Grounding — checked, not deadly. I can feel okay, we can feel okay, it can feel okay gets me to stability. The collision is competitiveness. A friend of my wife's once let me win, and I was furious; my wife's verdict was that she had hated that about me since college. Our tribe is competitive enough that it rarely collides — until a neighbor does.
"Red line: living skeptically, killing sacred cows. The shrug line: imperfection is not optional. Make sure you know your red line — shrug lines are shrug lines." — Robert (Sherpa) Millar
By the end of this, you will see that the red line does not have to be one of the four vehicles. Sometimes it is the signature itself, and the signature is the hardest thing to look at.
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Field Note Card: Just over ten minutes, one take, black and white. Second of the eleven Snapshot deep-dives. Attached to the My Culture Snapshot on the Blind Spots page.
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Four of my five here get less trouble than they should, precisely because the fifth one causes so much.
– Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Just Now
