Summation Push

Auren Hoffman's Summation Push for January, 2003

This issue:

* Auren's next venture

* Will There Ever be a Generation X President?

* The Connector: Keeping Your Contacts Up-to-Date

* Book Review: Nine Stories -- by J.D. Salinger

* Reader Responses:

* Friend of Auren: Joel Rosenberg, CEO of November Communications

* Summation Push Pick Links

* Hoffman Reading List

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AUREN'S NEXT VENTURE

I left Bullhorn at the end of November. So I'm now ready to start the next entrepreneurial chapter. I plan on spending the next couple of months evaluating certain business plans and getting a better understanding of market opportunities. Until then, please enjoy yet another addition of Summation. I can always be reached at auren@summation.net

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WILL THERE EVER BE A GENERATION X PRESIDENT?

By Auren Hoffman 

The current President of the United States, George W. Bush, is a boomer. So was his predecessor Bill Clinton. Boomers were born from 1943-1960 and experienced the sixties and Vietnam in their youth and the eighties prosperity/optimism in their rising adulthood. Given that most boomers are just now dominating the political landscape, I expect their generation to be a force for a long time to come.

The generation before the boomers, the Silent Generation (born 1925-1942) never had a president. They still have a few chances - but I expect they never will win the nation's highest office. People like Dick Cheney, Mike Dukakis, Gary Hart, and Colin Powell are all members of the Silent Generation - serious leaders but none of them ever becoming President.

For 32 years (1961-1993), the Presidency was dominated by the generation that preceded the Silents - commonly referred to as the G.I. Generation (or as Tom Brokaw likes to say, "the greatest generation"). Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush 41 all reached young adulthood during World War II. That generation effectively led America through the cold war to its completion.

Because of population trends, I'd argue that the boomer generation has a good chance of doing the same thing and will lead us through the 20-30 year war on terrorism we are now facing.

But were does that leave my generation, Generation X (born 1961-1981)? My generation is saddled right at the bottom of the baby bust and the next generation (those born from 1982-2002) has experienced one of the largest baby booms in our nation's history. And though we are represented by people like Congressmen Harold Ford and Devin Nunes, and Senators John Sununu and Norm Coleman, we might never have a President of our own.

More on this in next month's Summation when we review the book Generations. Food for thought for sure ...

(What do you think?   Write auren@summation.net)

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THE CONNECTOR
Tools for Increasing Your Network

KEEPING YOUR CONTACTS UP-TO-DATE

To be a Connector, you want to make sure you always have the most current information on all your contacts. There is nothing worse than sending someone a holiday card and having the letter returned to you because you have the wrong address.

Luckily, there are many software applications that help you keep your contacts up-to-date. If you're like me and use Microsoft Outlook as your personal information manager, then you have at least three software choices:

* Plaxo (http://www.plaxo.com). I use Plaxo because it is the simplest program and because it is free (at least for the time being). My experience with the product has been terrific and the customer service is outstanding. There is one glaring bug that sometimes erases email addresses that you have to be careful of, however.

* GoodContacts (http://www.goodcontacts.com). GoodContacts also works with ACT! and is a bit more graphical than Plaxo.

* Infotriever (http://www.infotriever.com). Infotriever is based in Toronto and is probably the most fully-featured product.

(What are your thoughts?   Write auren@summation.net)

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Useless Fact:

"President John Quincy Adams owned a pet alligator which he kept in the East Room of the White House"

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BOOK REVIEW:

Nine Stories
by J.D. Salinger
So once or twice a year, I treat myself to some fiction. And this book by the author of The Catcher in the Rye is terrific. The nine short stories are entertaining, enlightening, and even sometimes depressing. But they are all very well worth reading. And, of course, the great thing about short stories is that they are short (most are under 30 pages) - so you can read the story in one sitting.

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READER RESPONSES AND OPINIONS

Note: Normally I do not publish this many responses – but I thought that the following comments were extremely interesting and revealing:

Regarding last month's article on "Nurture vs. Nature" (see http://www.summation.net/push0212.html) Alicia Morga of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, remarks:

As a twin, I must respond.  Your assumption is wrong.  In fact, even though both are in the same womb, the differences begin shortly after conception.  A twin’s placement in the womb can seriously affect its ability to receive particular nutrition and the amount of nutrition, etc.  I’m not sure where I come out on the debate but I do understand the Nature argument.  If the differences in environment begin for twins from conception, then the fact that they emerge and live very similar lives is a very strong argument for Nature.

Also, your other point [regarding society’s reaction to a twin’s appearance] is flawed.  It’s the classic chicken and egg problem.  Is it one’s appearance or one’s personality that affects an interaction?  I’m sure you’ve known very striking people who when they open their mouths prompt an interaction that may not be consistent with their looks.  In addition, I think it’s wrong to say one’s personality is based on one’s interactions with others.  That may be true for a 6 month only baby but anybody who has dealt with a 5 year old knows – by that age one’s personality is essentially formed.  It’s one’s behaviors that take a lifetime to refine.

... and John Treat, Chairman of Sanctuary Development, chimes in:

My wife is twin (she has a twin brother) and we have fraternal twins (boy and a girl aged 4). This is a debate which has raged in our household between my wife (the nurturist) and me (the naturist). I also have the advantage of seeing my three older children grow to adulthood (they are now 30, 32 and 34).

My conclusion is that nature predominates. The environment can bring out the best or worst in an individual, but the basic tendencies and personality traits are there from the beginning. Another controversial point is that the parents' most critical decision may not be how to treat the child at home, but rather to what peer groups he/she exposes the children - largely determined by where they live and what schools they choose for the children. After all, once school starts (in our case when the twins were three years old), the kids spend as much if not more time with their peers and teachers than they do with their parents.

... and Steve Mushero, Managing Director at GlobalTech, writes:

I agree with your observations - as far as I can tell, it's largely nurture, especially on surface or external interactions.  Maybe some internal stuff is genetic, but how one views oneself, moral values, anger, women, relationships, education, are so overwhelmingly tied to one's upbringing that it has to be nurturing.  I even argue that most of the country's problems are due to poor parenting (including and especially having kids when you shouldn't followed by divorce).  Until we issue licenses to have children, we should focus on making better parents and growth environments, as it sure saves on treatment, law enforcement, and prisons down the road; it's also a big part of my work with girls and women, as they are most affected (here and abroad) by poor parenting; both on their own and by the men in their lives.

... and Divy Ravindranath, student at the UC Berkeley/UCSF Joint Medical Program, adds:

To sit at either extreme of the nature vs. nurture debate is an untenable condition.  Against the nature side stands the fact that genes are only one piece of the process that generates the person.  Most importantly, genes are turned off or on based largely on signals that come from the world outside of the individual cell, whether those signals come from neighboring cells or from hormones or what have you.  In a number of situations, those signals are activated in a chain that ultimately starts in the world outside of the body, meaning that nurture ultimately determines nature.  DNA is just a convenient way for the body to store information, like the punch-cards used in the computers of old; it is not the blueprint for life.  Life created DNA; not the other way around.  On the other side of the debate stands the fact that we are hard wired in some sense.  Life is experienced through our biology and our best scientific guess is that DNA and the proteins that come from DNA build our biology.

Behavior is most probably defined by some individual balance of nature and nurture.  This understanding also allows for the individual variation in behavior that we see in everyday life and that has to be reduced to an easily manipulable variable in order to be understood by science.  An example of reduction would be the inclusion of everything in the spectrum from raising one's voice in anger to armed robbery in the category of aggression.  Although this example is rather extreme, I think it demonstrates my point well.  While it is easy to reduce the behavior of an individual E. coli cell, the most basic and best understood of the main model organisms in genetic research, things get much more complicated when the model organism is a fruit fly or an earthworm or a monkey or a person.

... and Mark Klein comments:

First, you asked why those who support the nurture side are considered

left, and those who support the nature side are considered right. It is because the left generally supports more extensive social programs with the idea that they will make a difference to people (nurture), while the right generally believes that people are responsible for their own condition, and social programs don't help much (nature).

Over many years of observation, I've come to agree with the psychologist Alfred Adler that an important component of a person's personality is their "family constellation", or position in family, which is clearly on the nurture side. That is, first borns, youngest children, only children, middle children, twins, etc. generally share certain personality characteristics with people in the same position. For example, oldests generally complain, criticize and like to be in control (I'm one of those myself). Youngests are generally social, ambitious and have high expectations.

When you look at twins, you are actually looking at an older and a

younger.  There are physiological reasons why one was born first. So it is not surprising that identical twins would have different personalities, even though they have identical "nature". But it is not true either that they have identical nature, for as Adler points out, individuals have different physical systems (even twins). He called his theory "organ inferiority".

... and Tom Purcell adds:

What’s the old saying:  the acorn never falls far from the tree?  It does fall from the tree (symbolizing the passing of the genes) and will be dispersed in a normally distributed pattern around the tree, but it does not grow in the exact location of the parent tree...  (of course, I avoided saying that it wouldn't be an exact copy of the parent tree  because I don't know enough about oak? tree reproduction... my guess is they are fertilized by flowering and do not produce genetically identical offspring).

... and from the desk of Rob Corzine:

I am response-able; i.e. able to respond, to choose from among different responses to the same stimulus.  I am not merely a function of my past or of my genes or of my circumstances.  If I don't like where they have brought me, I can begin to exercise my free will and set to work to change my circumstances.  For most of us, this should begin with looking at those things that are the results not of our nature or our nurture (which we cannot change) but of our own bad choices.   No one should pretend that this is easy.  But what real alternative do we have?  Those who reject the struggle and adventure that this life challenges us to may have excellent (and even valid) excuses in the circumstances of their birth and rearing.  But having someone else to blame is cold comfort compared with the real drama of a life nobly lived.

... and John Girard from Clickability opines:

I've been doing quite a bit of reading in the tangentially related area of evolutionary biology/theory lately and think it happens to be one of today's most fascinating and rapidly changing areas of scientific inquiry (worthwhile reads: Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue).  Based on some of this reading, my current leaning is that nature vs. nurture is a convenient distinction, but is at best misleading and at worst completely false. 

Nature and nurture are really just two intertwined parts of a more important central theme that revolves around the idea of "replicants" (individual units that can copy themselves with small mutations and compete with one another for limited resources).  Genes are, naturally, one good example of replicants, but many are beginning to view other phenomena through this lens as well (memes, for instance, which is a term coined by Dawkins to describe an individual "idea" unit such as a social custom, a popular phrase, or a catchy-tune).

Regarding last month's article on "Spending Your Contacts" (see http://www.summation.net/push0212.html) Marianne Gaddy of VentureSpark, says:

As a fundraiser in the Bay Area for more than 20 years, I just wanted to say I agree wholeheartedly with your perspective about "spending" or "sharing" one's contacts.  

Hoarding one's relationships leads to an erosion of one's "network of relationships" while sharing one's connections, when you instinctually sense there might be a genuine interest for the parties involved, only enhances and keeps fresh your own network.

Lisa Edwards, President of ValuBond, writes with a book review:

Saw your reading list and I highly recommend you pick up Sketches from a Life by George Kennan.  It is short, fabulous, and one of my favorites.

(Write Auren your thoughts.   Write auren@summation.net)

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FRIEND OF AUREN (FOA)

Joel Rosenberg

Joel was introduced to me this year by Rich Thau, the wonderfully connected Executive Director of Third Millennium (and FOA from February, 2001). Last month, Joel authored his first fiction book, The Last Jihad (http://www.lastjihad.com), which has quickly become a best seller.

The Last Jihad is a fictional account of Saddam Hussein going nuclear. Though this is Joel's first fictional book, he has been a writer for sometime. He is a political columnist for WORLD magazine and helped write Steve Forbes' A New Birth of Freedom.

In Washington DC, Joel is CEO of November Communications and works closely with many conservative figures including Rush Limbaugh, William Bennett, Natan Sharanksy and Benjamin Netanyahu.

See past profiled Friends of Auren at: http://www.summation.net/friends.html

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THIS WEEK'S SUMMATION PUSH PICK LINKS TO MAKE YOU THINK:

* Dancing Bush (http://www.dancingbush.com/) -- George W can dance.

* MushNet (www.mushero.com/mushnet) – thoughts from Summation reader Steve Mushero.

* Auren's Ryze page (http://www.ryze.org/view.php?who=auren) -- worth viewing.

* RSVP for the Party of the Decade (http://evite.citysearch.com/GGParty@eudoramail.com/2011Party) -- taking place on Nov 11, 2011.

*How to sell via e-mail (from the book "21st Century Selling") (http://www.summation.net/emailselling.html)

*What am I reading? The Hoffman Reading List (http://www.summation.net/reading.html)

NOTE: You may reprint in full or in part (for free) with permission from the author.

Auren Hoffman's bio can be found at: http://www.summation.net/hoffman.html

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