The Corona Virus Flat Earth Mindset, Part 2
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The flat earth mindset is a mindset that, more often than not, ends up being a huge liability to the truth. Especially in the time of COVID-19 and coronavirus, it’s important that the truth be out there, and with a flat earth mindset, the truth gets scrambled. Bill Stierle and Tom discuss the relationship of a flat earth mindset to the ways we perceive and combat the spread of COVID-19, specifically the detriments. A lot of this has to do with the messages that we pick up around us in our daily lives, so especially in a time of crisis, we must exercise constant vigilance.
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It’s hard to narrow down what to talk about with so many things changing in our country and our world. We were talking about the flat-earth mindset last time and that was a great discussion. I think we can continue that a little bit, but in a little bit different way. Taking a little bit different perspective and diving into a few different details.
We’re confused about how to get clarity about which item to talk about because there are various angles, triggers or perspectives that our truth can get hijacked by. We want to see if we can pick them off sentences at a time, reduce them first before we problem solve it. A big part of these about the pursuit of truth is you’ve got to stare at what the central issue is and don’t get distracted by the perspectives. Even though the perspective, you want to jump on that and judge, criticize and label it, that’s not your strongest play. Your strongest play is, how do we be compassionate to what the person is saying and doing, rather than our judgmental mind getting hijacked and take that out for a spin?
Dr. Anthony Fauci has to deal with that on a daily basis, doesn’t he?
He does have that nurturing doctor thing going. I think that’s one of the things that’s been helpful for him is that he’s got a good bedside manner, two directions. Number one, the messaging towards the President. Number two, the messaging towards the people. His tone of voice is, “I would say that would be a failure,” but he’s doing it in such a way with such a tone that it’s very difficult for Donald Trump and others to say that he’s exaggerating because he’s being so nurturing. He’s like a nurturing parent to a wounded kid.
That’s a great example of what it is because we’ve said many times before, Donald Trump is behaving like a middle schooler, maybe an eighth-grader and a lot of his messaging and language. Here’s Dr. Anthony Fauci, being the nurturing parent. He’s having to deal with this child who has limited thinking and skills to communicate and make them feel like he’s not throwing him completely under the bus. At the same time, provide clarity, truth and more honesty as what we need.
It’s the honesty piece. How do I get honesty around the messaging? How can I be straight and honest about things, but doing it a way that a nurturing parent does it versus the over-reactivity of the parenting that’s trying to spin something in the positive light? If somebody is trying to spin something in the positive light, that all can take them all the way up and even across the line of truth. Tom, I’m going to ask you a very hard question. Have you ever lied to your kids?
You have to start at the central issue before you get distracted by different perspectives.
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I’m sure I have.
I’m surprised there was some hesitancy around that, but the answer is yes. Of course, you did. They’re little. They can’t hear the truth. It’s beyond their exposure and bandwidth. They’ll shut down if they get too much information. It’s like a little baby elephant that goes off a little bit and is playing with a cricket. The cricket makes this weird sound and the baby elephant runs and hides behind the mother’s legs. That’s a little bit about that messaging that takes place. Donald Trump messaging of optimism, even though we’re calling it a lie. His best effort to calm someone down is by not providing the truth.
That gives you a window of his childhood. It doesn’t give you, “He’s a terrible leader and he should know better.” It’s like, “You’re not even being honest with who you’re talking about.” That’s problematic because, for a person that keeps getting spun and spins others and was spun and spin when they were young, the feeling is dizzy when you get spun. That’s what the nation feels is dizzy.
Everybody’s trying to stop the dizziness instead of taking a step back, provide a moment of compassionate empathy, even in the newsroom. “Mr. President, you would like some acknowledgment that is at a level ten because, from your experience, you see that the choices that you’ve made are successful.” “Yes, I do.” From his perspective, he is a reality star, a short-term communicator, a high-level business owner that swoops in, says something and everyone has to jump. For him, it’s a ten. It’s got to be a ten because he hasn’t changed with the role or the identity. Tom, have you made any changes in your relationship or your marriage to get it to go better?
Absolutely.
That is what the adult mind does. They make changes to get things to go better and says, “The way I was thinking and talking about a month ago, is not going to help me in this month. It is not going to help me in six months from now.” “I may want to change the way I’m behaving and thinking,” not go for, “I’m staying where I am. Accept me for who I am. It’s a working formula. If you don’t love me, leave because you’re not loyal.” That little pesky little pivot that I did was on purpose because of loyalty and connection with our parents, through loyalty and respect. If one of the parents claims that, causes all unawareness and unconscious to take place because you’re not looking for people to make you better. You’re looking for people who are going to fit or work with you from your perspective.
Have you ever hired somebody that was under-skilled for the job that you hired them for? Initially, you liked them but 3 or 6 months, you’re going like, “This is not getting done.” That’s unsettling because that perspective was, “I want this person to this one thing,” instead of the perspective that I’ve often coached businesses to put into play is a very simple thing. Hire people that are better than you. They’re better than you in a different area, you want them to be excellent in your weakest area and get off of being barest that we get the weakest area. You let them know, “I am weak in this area. You are covering this base for me.” When we look at this flat-earth mindset, we’ve got to take people where they are and accept them, but also, recognize that they’re messaging to a group of people that is causing their alliance, their allegiance to that way of speaking. That way of being to get narrower and narrower, flatten the earth and then we have it that the earth is not round. It’s flat because my beliefs are flat.
How do we keep remembering? We must keep remembering and reminding people of things that we know to keep the world perspective large, not the world perspective flat. If it is, then there are going to be people that will say, “I’m voting for Donald Trump because he was like my dad who was positive, nurturing and gave me some reassurance. My dad wasn’t truthful all the time. He had an affair over here and he got divorced a couple of times over here, but he was a very nice guy to be around and he made me feel good by being around him.”
The marketer in chief, who we have acknowledged many times is a brilliant marketer, it’s his mojo. He is put in a position where if he tries to market or spin his way out of something, we’re talking about serious numbers of lives being impacted and lost. That changes the game a bit, doesn’t it?
It does, but the weird part about this is that our system is not able to hold people, marketers accountable for that as much. Would you be willing to hear an example of that? If I’m a big-time pharmacy and I put a drug out in the marketplace and I promote it as this, but it’s this other thing. It kills a bunch of people. Do any of those executives go to jail for that?
Usually, they’re not.
I don’t like it when I can’t come up with examples that then go like, “He’s not going to be accountable for the deaths that are going to be caused by mismessaging.” There’s got to be a class action suit with all the people that have died against him as a messenger, as a person that’s selling something.
The only accountability is at the ballot box in November.
When we look at the flat earth mindset, we have to take people where they are and accept them.
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That accountability is as empty as a settlement of $500,000, for a loved one that got ten years of their life cut off because you did something tragic with your pharmaceutical marketing message. It’s like, “Thanks for the $250,000. Is that all my son was worth?
Thanks for the $500,000.” “I got $1 million? Big deal. I want my son back, I want my daughter back. I want my grandma back. I want my grandfather back.” I want it back because the value of life is not being protected at the level that would make my life wonderful. The earth and the belief structure have been flattened about how accountability works. Accountability doesn’t work that way.
It’s very obvious to a very large portion of Americans that the President is only saying things that he wants to say. He wants the outcome to be different than it’s likely going to be. Speaking to those points that he wants it to be are not helpful and maybe are preventing people from staying home when they should and self-isolating. We talked a little bit about Rachel Maddow and her show suggesting that we’ve got to get this guy off live TV. They need to do his pressers, not live to record them. If he says something good, air it. If he doesn’t, edit it out because it’s going to cost lives. I’ve got to share this as meme not to make light of this serious situation, but there’s this meme going around on Facebook that said, “This is the mask that’s needed to save millions of lives.” It’s a picture of Donald Trump behind Dr. Anthony Fauci with duct tape over his mouth. The mask is to keep the President from saying anything.
I heard that, but I haven’t fact-checked this. I might be promoting something, it might not be true. NPR in the Washington area or the Seattle area have had decided.
It was the Seattle area. I saw that too.
Oregon or someplace else.
I think NPR in Washington state is headed to no longer air these daily medical press conference with the President live because there are so much misinformation and disinformation broadcasted.
That’s the whole thing. You see the cut on her leg, you tell your daughter when you look at it, “That’s a pretty good-sized cut.” The first thing that you say to her is not, “It looks like you’re going to need about 5 or 10 stitches in that.” It will freak her out. What does 5 to 10 stitches mean in the level of pain? Will I die from 5 to 10 stitches? It’s not all that bad. A little bit of what Donald Trump is doing is providing that reassurance and comfort, but not coming back around and saying, “Here’s the next message about the seriousness of this. Not necessarily going to the positive, which is hard to stare down somebody’s sadness or feeling scared when a person has avoided feeling scared for 70 years. He had to afford scare. His childhood? No way. He’s going to be scared around his dad or scared around his mom from the little I know.
That’s why he’s incapable of certain things. I think that’s very true. He is incapable of compassion and empathy. He sees it as a weakness for whatever reason. What’s mind-boggling is that I saw the results of a Gallup Poll that says that the President’s approval rating is matching the highest it’s ever been.
To you, it’s going to be, but from our viewpoint, if we look at the truth and we purchased the truth back, we say, “There’s a good reason why that’s taking place.” These people that approve of him are looking at the putative father, the father that’s in charge. The father that lies because I love my father. I’m not going to give up love or connection with my father at the expense of truth. I’m going to keep a loving connection in place. I’m going to keep loyalty in place because I’m a part of his family. Why? I bought the hat. I’m a part of that hat. That hat is a part of my community. My community says, “Make America great again.” This person who spins things positively as the leader that’s going to take us there. Why? Whatever the exaggerated story comes next, when the comment comes close, then we’re going to be transported up into the comment that would be a Branch Davidian thing.
The messaging of optimism when you’re experiencing loss, the truth can easily be hijacked by this simple promise of something getting better. Whether it’s truthful or not, if you wear these shoes, if you put this tie in a certain way. If you wear this hat. If you speak this way. If you follow this set of rules. If you pray in this certain way. If you make this offering a certain way. All those things flattened the belief structure and doesn’t allow perspective and our perception to live fully. I don’t disbelieve everything Donald Trump says. He says things because he’s thinking. He is meeting the need for identity with every message.
Whose identity?
The identity of the nation. He’s saying, “I can help you get this identity. Come with me. It will be great when we have that great identity again.”
We must keep remembering and reminding people of things that we know to keep the world perspective large, not flat.
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It’s like, “Make America great again.”
Republicans are like, “We need an enemy. Why not make it the Democrats? Why not make it a foreign country? Let’s make it an immigrant or a situation, ‘It’s going to be bad,’ but not that bad. Everything’s going to get better quick.” There’s an anticipation that I’m going to go back to my church and pray with my community who are all wearing red hats in this church. It’s unsettling.
What kind of solutions can we come up with here to this tragic communication?
We’ve got three major problems in regards to the circumstance. Number one, how the need for truth is being hijacked by the things that we’ve talked about? It’s been purchased away through language. Whether it’s Donald Trump or anybody. It doesn’t even matter what side of the fence it’s on, whether it’s Democrat. It’s almost like, “I’ve got to make this bigger because he’s making it so smaller.” Instead of giving a head nod, “The President is looking to be ops. It looks like the President gave a very optimistic speech and here’s the level of optimism that he was sharing with all of us.” Let’s look at the numbers. I pivoted to science, but you’ve got to acknowledge that the child is scared. Who’s scared? The child that has cut and needs stitches.
I could tell her that first, “This thing is going to heal up before you know it.” You just lie to your kid. That is extreme. We’ve got four weeks to get these 10 or 12 stitches to heal and you’ve got several visits to the doctor’s appointment in order to embrace that experience of healing. You’ve got to go there and get this. You’ve got to drive home. You’ve got to keep bandages. It’s still going to be there. You’ve got to care for it and you’ve got to go back. You’ve got to see if the stitches come out or if they don’t come out. When they do come out, then you’ve got to keep it this way. That is communication by communication in time. The adult mind is not locked down into the child’s mind. The adult mind can say, “There’s a series of steps here,” but you don’t have to calm a person down by not providing them the truth. There are other ways to calm somebody down without all the nasty side effects that come when you don’t give them the truth.
Let’s see if we can get our way out of here. Number one, provide empathy for what Donald Trump is saying or doing. Ask the person you’re talking which one of these two questions. Are you most nervous about your health and the care for those around you? Are you more nervous about the financial impact that everyone is going through or might go through? Which one are you more nervous about? That causes the person to separate what is collapsed in our narrative. Is this a financial conversation or is this a physical safety conversation? We can get to that next time more about, is these physical concerns? Is it about financial concerns? Are you scared because your need for safety is not met? Are you feeling scared because the need for stability with money is not met? Are you scared and nervous about protecting your family or parents? Are you feeling scared, nervous and anxious about caring for the economy and being able to put a roof over your head to have enough money for that?
That certainly gets people thinking differently.
It also reduces the emotion inside the person’s body because they’re not all overwhelmed, confused, torn and furious. They’re not fighting on alternate issues. They’re staying on the primary issue that they’re upset about, not with what’s going on inside you or the environment. When you think about flat-earth, what happens is that when you pile things on top of each other, eventually the boxes collapse. Eventually, the building collapses because it doesn’t have enough support. All of a sudden, it’s like, “Do I want to clean up this mess? I’m going to let this mess go by. I’m going to go over here. I’m going to distract people with the economy. I’m going to say I’m going to talk to the person that is advocating for church and spirituality. I’m going to stay there because that’s the safest island that I can stay on.” That’s where he’s staying. At Easter, I see the church is filled with people. I see all of us worshiping together. The kid didn’t go to church himself.
Isn’t that an interesting irony?
No. It’s a message to people that are in his tribe. That’s unsettling. It’s not taking anything away for the people who want to go to church on Easter Sunday. If you’re doing that and one of your congregation dies over it, I don’t know how good I’d feel about that, especially if I got encouraged to go. People woke up. Americans could be scared easily. Our whole media industry is about scaring people about stuff. Everything from horror films to action adventures to romantic comedies. You’ve got to scare the viewers or otherwise, they’re not going to refer or come back to it.
You’ve got to do something to scare them. That’s why it’s flat and overwhelming in our talk because it looks like there’s no way out. The way out is to focus on the series of needs. We’ll continue this discussion to be able to get greater clarity, to pursue truth and trust more effectively, to deal with our own doubt and skepticism more effectively. That’s a big part of it whether here or another webinar that I’m doing on one of my other websites. Hang out so that we can keep adjusting our perspective so that things go better.
That sounds good.
More to come, Tom.
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