Kevin Vogelsang

Back in high school, I was required to take a philosophy course.

My teacher made the following statement, “It has been said that The Western Tradition of philosophy, men sitting around in discussion, is a predatory mechanism.”

This is certainly a curious statement.  And I’m not sure it’s limited to the Western Tradition; this could just be an illusion of the way history is recorded.

The statement does not refer to men sitting around plotting strategies of war or something of that nature.  The statement refers to discussions that seem to have begun with the likes of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato.

So what does this have to do with predation?  Here’s my theory of why this could be:

Any group of people sitting around discussing deep questions are making connections with each other.  Sharing deep personal thoughts requires some level of intimacy.  Additionally, discussing such questions also provides a window into the minds of those participating.  By listening to you answer tough questions, I’m able to learn something about you: what you value, your motivations, your biases, your weaknesses, your talents, and even your alliances with others involved.

These factors create dense and intelligent connections between people, which are the ingredients for creativity and action.

Here’s another theory as to why this could be true:
Discussions harness collective intelligence and collective creativity.  Consequently, they’re meme machines; discussions lead to ideas and attitudes that spread from an epicenter out to a network’s peripheral (and then perhaps amplified by other epicenters).

If you hear about an idea that resonates with you and strikes you as important, you’re likely to share it with others.  Shared experience is powerful, and it brings like-minded people together.  This creates social alignment–an important part of getting things done at a large scale.

You could say that philosophizing is a means of initiating a community-driven movement, which are capable of quickly accelerating.

The two theories are similar.  However, the first is more about the formation of a band of warriors that will take on a mission.  The second is about social alignment–which is an advantage harnessed by many species.  Both of these could be considered and used for forms of predation.

These are just two theories.  There are many others.  There are also other interpretations of the statement itself.  Perhaps the act of learning itself (which is done through discussion) qualifies philosophizing as a predatory? Perhaps discussion and the resulting debate allows a thought leader to emerge (which could relate to predation on different levels)?

So is it possible philosophizing is an act of predation?  What’s your theory?

-Kevin
3.8.2010

I’ve alluded to Hunter vs Farmer Theory somewhat before.  It’s time I brought up the concept directly.

The basic idea: at some point, humans diverged.  Some became farmers.  Others remained hunters.  This created an important dichotomy of characteristics found in people.

Of course, people aren’t simply one or the other.  An individual’s characteristics exist within a multi-dimensional, continuous spectrum of possible characteristics. However, the Theory provides an excellent framework for thinking about the neurological differences in people.

The Theory is particularly interesting because it highlights society’s failure (particularly our education system’s) to understand the neurodiversity of humans, and how society often only admires a limited set of characteristics, while disregarding other valuable traits that are naively considered to be “deficiencies”.

The wikipedia page is a good primer.  Here’s Hartmann’s illustration of the Theory by placing ADD “deficiencies” in juxtaposition to their value when placed in a different perspective/context.

On a similar topic, also check out Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on society’s failure to make use of the full potential of the vast array of intelligences humans exhibit.

Think about it.

-Kevin
3.3.2010

Back in July of 2009, I published my friend Luis Fernandez’s essays on the five most important lessons to learn in life on the blog.  I wrote an introduction and some notes to supplement the essays.

This body of writing has now been published as a physical book.

As Luis pointed out, there is something different, and special, about publishing in book format, as opposed to digitally.  It feels immortalized, written in stone.  It feels like a bigger step.

The prospects of digital publishing are very exciting to me.  But, something special still exists for books.  People have said, “The same thing that happened to records will happen to books.  People will stay attached to them  for a while, but they’ll quickly move on.”  I’m not so sure it’s quite the same.

The publishing industry has become a big focus of mine. This represents my first foray into physical publishing. Exciting things are happening.  Books can now be printed on-demand.  Self-publishing platforms have matured.

Of course, Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, maintains that there is no such thing as “self-publishing.”  People that self-publish, that keep doing it, and are good at it, just become publishers.  “I was a self-publisher once,” Tim said in an interview.

There’s a whole new set of tools out there now that can be used to spread and distribute information, ideas, and insights.  This is incredible.  These tools have brought Luis’s essays to the world in a new medium.

You can purchase a copy of “The 5 Things to Learn in this Life” here from CreateSpace. As far as the Author’s margins are concerned (and consequently Luis’s daughter’s college fund), this is the best place to purchase right now.

For added convenience, you can also purchase the book on Amazon.

Luis’s book is currently only available in paperback.  As I learn my way around the publishing world, it’ll become available in digital formats (ex. on the Kindle) and hardback.

I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned about the publishing world as I go through this process.

-Kevin
3.2.2010

Education through athletics is incredibly undervalued.

In school, I played varsity basketball, ran track, and played football.  I started playing because it’s what my friends did, I thought I could be good at it, and I wanted to compete.

Eventually in college, I realized athletics was the most important piece of my overall education.  I didn’t fully realize this until a sales class that I took at Sloan.  Bill Aulet was talking about hiring, and one of the main things he wondered about people was “did they play competitive sports?”

In US high schools, class room learning just isn’t that good.  You learn next to nothing about yourself, teamwork, leadership, politics, and performance. You certainly don’t learn toughness.

In the US, athletics is the only arena where performance is closely measured.  There’s stats on everything.  Through the entire education system, it’s also the only arena where you’re judged on your performance.  If you aren’t performing, you lose your job or your starting position.  This is important.

For nearly 20 years, I poured the majority of my energy and focus into athletics.  And it took me 20 years to realize the educational value–the value of understanding the athlete’s mindset.

It always pains me to hear people tell kids that they need to focus on classwork.  Our education system is full of flaws.  But I think one thing we need to value more is motivation. If a student enjoys something (anything) and is willing to work hard it, push them forward.  They’ll learn more doing that than half-ass reading Great Expectations and Frankenstein.  When it comes to valuable experience, my time as an athlete is the most important experience I’ve had, even more important than MIT or any work experience.  It’s where I learned all the core skills everyone should learn.

For business, particularly for startups, the competitive sports team is the closest experience you can get in school: You pick your team and go find a way to win.

-Kevin
2.2.2010

Over the past week or so I’ve written about why it’s important to find your passion and gain expertise.

Blogging can help you with these, and more.

Blogging is an awesome thing.

If you blog consistently, you’ll blog about what’s on your mind.  And soon enough, you will realize what’s on your mind and what you want to share.  This says a lot about you.

You’ll talk about things you know.  People will challenge you and ask you questions.  This will cause you to learn more.

People will learn from you.  People will appreciate your experience and the shared experiences between you.

People will also learn about you.  It’s strange how little we know about what is on each other’s minds and what our interests are, even our close friends that live next door to us.  Our minds are in a constant state of flux.  It’s hard to keep up with.  (Ever written something and looked back at it even a few months later?  It almost always gets the response, “Did I write that?  What was I thinking?”)

Blogging gives you an audience to write to.  Writing to people will require you to write clearly, and consequently, think more clearly.  Therefore, you’ll learn from writing.  One of my primary motivators to write is just to figure things out.  When I start writing about a topic, it leads me to unexpected ideas and conclusions.

It’ll also help you stay in touch with others and help them stay in touch with you.  You’re constantly offer people something to talk about with you.

Lastly, when someone writes a comment, or just visits your page,  they provide you with positive feedback.  Your work has been noticed.  As you see your number of visitors slowly increase, you’ll want to keep doing it.  Like running, once you get in shape, once you get in a groove, you won’t want to give it up.

Starting a blog is easy. Just go to Wordpress.com .

-Kevin
1.22.10

Everyone should be an expert on something (anything!), and they should know more about that topic than anyone they know.

By investing even a little more energy into their area of expertise than the rest of us, they can build a lot of value.  Building expertise creates channels that allow knowledge and ideas to spread through our social networks. And the real source of knowledge on a topic is the community focused on that topic.

But there’s simpler, immediate benefits to you when you and others buy into this concept.

Think about it.  If everyone you knew had some level of expertise in something, you’d be much better off and have far greater resources (that’s why it’s called social capital.)  Need your car fixed?  You’d definitely know someone that can point you in the right direction.  Need help with your paper on The Civil War?  It be awesome to have a Civil War afficionado by your side.

There’s a few perplexing aspects of “expertise” however:

1) Most people aren’t aware that they have an area of expertise, which keeps them from making that expertise useful.

If they don’t know they possess any level of expertise, they won’t self-identify with it.  And if they don’t self-identify with it,  they won’t invest that little extra that makes their knowledge level really valuable and sustainable. Furthermore, they’ll be much less likely to chime in when people need to know about their topic of expertise…..

2) People don’t know what each other’s expertise is, until by happenstance, the subject comes up.  If you’re smart, when you have a problem that Google or Wikipedia can’t help you with, you’ll go to another smart person and say, “Hey, Mark, do you know anything about the Civil War?”.  And if you’re lucky, he’ll then respond, “No, but Rob Utz loves the Civil War and knows a lot about it.  Ask him.”  You’ll then go to this person, and they’ll either have the answer, know how to figure it out, or be excited enough that they’ll work with you on it to get it figured out.

Since people often aren’t completely conscious of what their expertise is, and we surely don’t know what their expertise is, we’re left with a bit of needless friction, a loss of potential so to speak.  You’re both missing out on knowledge.  So what can we do about this?

One thing is certain: people like to share what’s on their mind.  If you ever need to make conversation, ask them about what interests them or test the waters to try and  figure out what they like to think about.  There will be no shortage of things to talk about.

With this in mind, the answer is simple, although rarely carried out: figure out what the people around you know. Learn their story and figure out what their interests are.  Interest is the first phase of expertise, so someone’s interests are a good indicator of what their expertise is, or what it could someday be.  (This all goes back to why it’s important to find a passion–passion and expertise have a very close relationship.)

By doing this you gain an understanding of which friend to talk to when you have a problem some day, and your friend gets positive feedback for gaining knowledge in their area of interest (thus pushing them forward!).

But more than that,  you’ll also make more friends, and be much more interesting to talk to.  People will walk away from conversations with you thinking, “what an interesting and awesome person,” even though they probably did the majority of the talking.

-Kevin
1.20.2010

Today’s issue of USA Today has a great write-up highlighting two of my

Me, Deron Brown, Mike Fitzgerald, Rick Mancuso

best friends, Deron Brown and Mike Fitzgerald.  You can check it out by going here.

USA Today’s Kelly Whiteside did a good job with the write-up, but there is always more to a story that gets the spotlight in a national media outlet.

Since I played for MIT Football for 4 years and played with Deron and Fitz for 3, I thought I’d add a few thoughts:

Deron Brown didn’t get into MIT because he’s good at football.  None of us did.  Back when I got admitted to MIT, I had a number of people say to me, “You got into MIT?  Oh, you’re a football player, that’s why…”  As if to say, I got a free pass.

I saw similar sentiments in the comments of the article. Don’t believe it.  Deron Brown got into MIT because he understands how to commit to something, work hard at it, and perform. You can show you know how to do that in many arenas, although athletics might be one of the best in my opinion.

Don’t underestimate the adverse effects of going to school at MIT.  The stress, less than ideal diet, lack of lifting, and lack of sleep are in complete opposition of what a top-notch athlete needs to perform.  I would lose over 2o pounds over the course of the season (which is significant when you’re a wide receiver with not a lot of weight to lose anyway).

(With this in mind, I’d love to see what an NFL team could do with a guy like Deron once they got him on a good diet and a weight program.)

Mike Fitzgerald isn’t just a wizard statistician.  He’s also one of the best wideouts to play at MIT. He also played in the Massachusett’s All-Star Game in high school.  And to stress the point, he did pick Lester Hudson for the Celtics.  If I were the Celtics, I’d be offering Mike Fitzgerald (and Kyle Johnson)  a position right now.  In 5 years, they’ll likely be the best brains in the sports management business.

Robert "The UtzBus" Utz

Don’t forget the supporting cast.  Last year, MIT had a .500 record (which admittedly was disappointing considering the talent we had, MIT takes its toll) and Deron had his breakout year thanks to guys like Robert “The UtzBus” Utz (MIT Fullback, currently grad student at Maryland) and James Oleinik (DIII All-American Lineman, bunch of other academic and athletic awards as well).

Only a select few can make it into MIT and make the four-year commitment to playing varsity football and performing at a high level.  Guys like Deron, Fitzy, James, and UtzBus are the type of guys you want on your team, no matter the context, because when you go to bat, and you’re in the arena, you know you got guys behind you that know how to  take care of business.  Few understand that like they do.

Kevin
11.3.2009

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

-Teddy Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena, 1910

The “Man in the Arena”, as dubbed by Teddy, is a powerful psychological symbol.

Criticism has its place.  I can’t remember a time when I made a significant decision that wasn’t criticized.  Criticism is the companion of responsibility.  Criticism helps ensure commitment to decisive action.

And while criticism has its place, critics are relegated to the sidelines.

We are quick to criticize the “Man in the Arena”, but he makes the ground more fertile for others.  Others will stand on his shoulders to see farther.

-Kevin
11.2.2009

Learning changes us.  As we continue to learn, we begin thinking differently about things.  And as we become accustomed to possessing our specific set of knowledge and skills, we begin to forget what it was like to not have them; we simply can’t fathom that other people don’t know the same things as we do.

This phenomena,  The Curse of Knowledge, represents a powerful concept to understand.

The great thinkers either implicitly or explicitly understood this.  If you have great thoughts, you must share them with even greater clarity–you’re sharing them with people who know far less about them.  This is the only way great ideas can spread.

Kevin
10.26.2009

Being good at “talking to girls” is an important skill in life.  But, I don’t say this for the reasons you’re probably thinking.

I’ve been going to a lot of meetups and networking events lately, which led me to a few thoughts about social events.

The nature of social events really doesn’t change all that much as you get older.  Some people are talkative.  Some are more reserved.  Some groups mix well.  Some don’t.  These personalities all come to the party to create an interesting set of interactions.

And while the basic nature doesn’t change all that much, the goals/value of social events does evolve.  In middle school and high school, you could say the value of social events are to learn basic social skills (or something like that).  In college, events are more about having fun and meeting members of the opposite sex.  After college, you start seeing more events that are meant to also further business goals.

At a recent networking event, I was briefly contemplating how to get a friend an introduction to a business contact of mine.  For some reason, I realized I was playing the role of the “wing-man”, except in a different context.  Consequently, I then had another realization: being good at “talking to women” (or your preferred sex) is a valuable skill set.  (I think the slang term “hitting on” gets to my meaning more clearly, but I didn’t want to send the wrong message.)

Specifically, I’m referring to being skilled at meeting that one person  you really want to talk to and connect with in a meaningful way.  Now of course, the reason I analogize this skill to “talking to women” is simply because, as a male, this is the first version of this type of competitive social game that I encountered in my life.  Many versions exist.  The point is, being able to connect with that one person in the room that is significant to you (and likely others) is important.

So I guess you could say “talking to” members of your preferred sex is an important part of an education.  And going through this exercise hones skills that have tangible value  in your professional life, if you’re paying attention.

Kevin
10.22.09