Noticing what’s going on around you is important ... knowing what’s going on that determines what you notice about what’s going on around you is even more important. With the election of Barrack Hussein Obama this past Tuesday the whole game is about to change. Not like you’re used to ... not like it did during the transition in any American Presidency in the entire twentieth century or even in the first transition leading into the twenty-first century ... this transition will rock the foundations of society as America has defined it since it’s inception in the late part of the eighteenth century!

And ... only those who are ready ... those who know precisely what they are looking for ... are likely to prosper in this brave, new world.

More than you could have ever believed it we are about to enter the Age of Aquarius ... and I’m not just singing “Dixie.”

Good day,

I was somewhere over the eastern Atlantic Ocean when the networks proclaimed Barrack Hussein Obama, "King Elect" ... er, excuse me, "President (Elect)" ... or at least that how it sounded when I finally heard the news upon landing.

I think it's a good day for America (for some of you that's the United States of America, but for all of us who live there and many others who are "old school" just America is enough to make my point clear), and also for the world-at-large. All in all I think Barrack Obama's a good man for the job, and the best man for the job today (given the choices both leading up to the election and for the final election itself). Not that I thought that John McCain wouldn't have been a good President as well, I think he would have ... but it's a question of "fit and match" for me as some of you who read me regularly might already know.

One perspective about how to make a choice like who should be the next President would be, "What can I get from his/her presidency (for myself)." In other words, "What's in the goodie bag they're holding out for me personally." This seems to be a function of what some are calling, "The Shallowest Generation" referring to the boomers and post-boomers.

"I hate to tell you Boomers, but putting a yellow ribbon on the back of your $50,000 SUV is not sacrifice. Our claim to fame is living way beyond our means for the last three decades, to the point where we have virtually bankrupted our capitalist system. Baby Boomers have been occupying the White House for the last sixteen years. The majority of Congress is Baby Boomers. The CEOs and top executives of Wall Street firms are Baby Boomers. The media is dominated by Baby Boom executives and on-air stars. We have no one to blame but ourselves for the current predicament. Blaming Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson for our dire situation is a cop out. Baby Boomers had the time, power, and ability to change our course. We have chosen to leave the heavy lifting to future generations in order to live the good life today."

from: THE SHALLOWEST GENERATION by James Quinn, November 3, 2008

Looking at it from the outside it would appear that this disease of "Boomeritis" has infected most of the industrialized world as we know it. For years the high-end luxury retail market has soared. In fact it was presumed by most "savvy" investors that the luxury retail market was on an unending roll of every increasing growth. There's even a Luxury Marketing Council who's founder and chair Greg Furman has been touting as recently as the beginning of this year the immunity and selectivity of the luxury market ... a market flooded by boomers who want to have a part of the "good life" that's on offer there.

Yet, now we are hearing about another possibility, that in the wake of the most recent economic crisis even the luxury market may be showing signs of failing alongside other retail sectors. The idea that luxury buyers may be price conscious after all is almost heresy in that market space. However, at the very same time the ultra-luxury market continues to grow and maintain it's strength despite the crashing portfolios of so many boomers who thought they were impervious to the economic realities of the ordinary blue collar workers out there.

The references in politics will always be the social/culture form as it has been experienced and as it is intended to become. In other words what I'm suggesting is that politics is an expression of both the perceptual experience and desire of those with political power. When we're talking about a democracy then the power is held by the voters, especially before the election whereas afterwards they apparently lose a significant amount of their ability to impose their power without relatively extreme measures being taken to do so.

It seems that in the latest U.S. presidential election that has just occurred we witnessed the intersection of the late bloom of boomeritis with the political process. Essentially, what the boomers have wrought is not what they find they want now that they have it. The desire to have an ever growing economy left unchecked has produced effects like:

All told the current election process and the result against the current social/cultural backdrop are not surprising to an astute observer. Not that there were any guarantees that it had to go the way that it has, but surely in hindsight the results make perfect sense all around, i.e.: systemically. One of the filters I use most often when I am observing social/cultural forms has become the Graves Model as developed by Dr. Clare W. Graves. Essentially a model of human bio-social evolution that I have written and spoken about extensively elsewhere, including on this blog (E.g.: Burning Desire to Change the World - Part I and Burning Desire to Change the World - Part II).

To get the backdrop of the Graves Model I recommend you go back and read the two postings I referred to above. However the basic idea is that as we have advanced our social/cultural forms we have done so in alignment with our biology as humans. This is what Dr. Graves referred as a "The Emergent, Cyclical, Double-Helix Model Of The Adult Human Biopsychosocial Systems" you gotta love that name!!! What he actually said was that as people continue to interact socially they advance the social model they are using which gives them greater access to their full biological neuro-potential. Literally that we can use more of the potential of our brains as we advance socially. Another way of saying this is that more sophisticated social models demand greater brain resources to be used to operate them and this loop between demand and opportunity gives us access to the potential that is present but had been previously unrealized.

Essentially, what Dr. Graves is offering us is a way to consider a different way of thinking about evolution:

Humans with our sophisticated and complex social systems demand us to access more of our latent neuro-potential ... such that the extremely sophisticated and complex socio-cultural systems we have evolved have allowed us to continue to advance to our biological evolution alongside our socio-cultural systems in tandem step-by-step .... not by altering the our gross physical anatomy but by allowing us to gain access to the resources contained in our existing gross physical anatomy, and that process continues in an ongoing way even today.

So rather than human evolution being something that ceased in any significant way 100,000 years ago or more human evolution has continued in an externalized way through the advancement of our socio-cultural systems. Literally, the suggestion is that purely biological evolution allows the species that are physically evolving to better cope with the demands placed on them by the environments they occupy. In the same way:

Graves biopsychosocial, emergent cyclical double-helix, systems are an external form of evolution that humans have adopted allowing us, by virtue of evolving our socio-cultural systems, to better cope with the environments we occupy ... including those we are creating, e.g.: the global economy.

Dr. Graves designed his model delineating significant shifts in the values that people occupying various levels of socio-cultural systems utilize. These values determine both what information in the environment a person utilizing them will tend to notice as well as how they will construct and assign meaning to that information. The meaning assigned to information in the environment determines the behavioral responses that emerge and the outcomes that people will produce as a result. Simplified what Dr. Graves has organized is a model that delineates how people produce the specific outcomes in the environments they occupy, and why different groups of people create different kinds of outcomes in different environments based on the value set they are operating from at any given moment.

IMO what we are now witnessing is a shift in the United States of America from utilizing Graves Level Five values as the default socio-cultural system to a Graves Level Six value set as the default operating system. Using the outline of the Graves Model to describe this shift it could be said that the United States of America has been operating from a system that seeks and rewards opportunity, while simultaneously allowing the rewards to accumulate to the most efficient operator in the system in terms of exploiting the opportunities present, what Dr. Graves referred to as Level Five. I'm referring to a new shift to where 1) the total resources in the system are distributed as broadly as possible, 2) access to the system's resources is created for as many people as possible and 3) the total resources available in the system are expanded by exploiting technology to increase the leverage of the resources throughout the system-at-large ... what Dr. Graves refers to in his model as Level Six.

It seems that the most recent election in the United States of Barrack Obama as President-Elect is a Graves Six response (especially when you compare what would have had to have been true to elect John McCain based on his campaign messages). This is a monumental socio-cultural shift for the United States of America ... and the entire world given the social, economic and military prominence of the United States of America on the global scene. From where I'm sitting the election of President-Elect Obama has changed the entire playing field and only those who are ready to play at the next level up in the game will prosper when the impact of the shifts that are coming begin to emerge.

Fundamentally, I say all of this coming out of a position where I've been putting the greatest force of my attention on the nature of these socio-cultural forms for the better part of a decade now. Using the models I was introduced to by Roye in my years of apprenticing with him, including hundreds of hours discussing the impact of his work in terms the effect of that work within socio-cultural systems, as well as the material I've been studying and using since I've build an enormous base from which to pursue this particular fascination of mine ... as well as to bring my expertise to my clients worldwide. All in all I'd say these are indeed most interesting times!!!

Best regards,

Dr. Joseph Riggio, Social Ontologist

Holte, Denmark

THERE'S STILL TIME TO REGISTER!

Jump Into 2009 With A Running Start ... join Joseph at either of both of the PERSONAL ENHANCEMENT workshops he's presenting this December

I’ll be presenting the last Personal Enhancement programs this year in England on December 8th, and then again in Barcelona on December 10th. Both programs are limited to only ten people each, and are almost always in high demand. This is the only public program I run where I work privately with people in a group format. For a full day I work on issues that the participants want me to work with them on, deliver a ton of material of creating exquisite performances in relation to the issues that come up, and have no agenda whatsoever except delivering on the requests participants bring into the room.

Essentially what I’m doing is hours of private work that I normally charge ten times the amount of what this program fee is for the entire day! If you’re interested give Nancy a call at +1/609-275-1845 or email her at nsriggio@josephriggio.com for full program details and to register.

As always I take participants into these programs on a first come, first serve basis and when I have ten in each program the doors will close for 2008! If you know that you want to kick off 2009 running you can even come to both programs, in England and in Spain, and pay half the normal program fee for the second program ... but please act now ... call or email Nancy today ... I hate having to turn people down because we’ve overrun the room and you’ve asked me too late.

It’s seldom that I really feel in a visceral way that I am participating in the flow of history. Specifically, that I am in some way part of an historic moment in time, yet this time around voting has indeed felt that way for me ... and I’d bet for a whole lot of Americans voting today as well. And, FWIW, I think much of the world’s attention is also on what’s happening in the poll booths of America today as well. G-d Bless America ... as Kaye Ballard used to sing it ...

Howdy all'ya'all,

Well I have voted ... up until that very last moment I truly didn't know who I'd be pulling that lever for (actually pushing a button on a new electronic voting machine), but in that moment I choose.

All I say for now is that my sense is that I voted in an historic election for the U.S. of A. ... and tonight sometime while I'm somewhere over the Atlantic the world will know what the country says in regard to who should be our next President.

Wish us well world ... (your futures could count on it )

Best regards,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

As we’re entering the last part of 2008 and those of us in the northern climates are feeling the onset of autumn weather it’s a good time to take stock and begin thinking about how you’ve gotten to where you are and where you want to go from here. Maybe you’ll find that along the way you’ve picked up some baggage you no longer need, and have been judging things by some old “installed” criteria that no longer fit you so well. One of those things might be the education you have or haven’t had yet ... about failing really well.

Good Morning,

To some folks it would seem as though I have been really busy lately ... major client projects I’m working on, serving on a Board of Trustees, serving on some volunteer committees, developing new material for the MythoSelf Process training programs, designing a new professional leadership communication training program, working with private clients, reformatting my radio show on VoiceAmerica.com, multiple writing projects, launching new products for 2009 ... WHEW! And when I’m not doing that (or sleeping) of course I’m carving out time for my family every chance I get, which I make sure is plenty actually ... taking my daughter to school and sometimes picking her up too, cooking dinner for the family, talking with my son and helping him make plans to attend graduate school, spending some time with my wife just enjoying each other’s company. That sure looks like a long list, and I didn’t even try to make it comprehensive ... just what I thought of off the top of my head as I’m writing.

I’m going to guess there are some folks who could give me a run for my money with their own lists. The point is that many people today are busy, some of the folks I work with are among the busiest people I know. Yet what’s interesting is that the best performers I know don’t seem busy. In fact the best performers I know seem to move from one thing to another with both elegance and grace, and they do so as though they have all the time in the world to do it. Unlike the popular impression that the busiest people are the most powerful or successful, what I have found is that the most powerful and successful people I know have all the time they want and need to do what they want. I’d even go so far as to say that the real metric becomes:

“Having all the time you want, to do whatever it is that you want, that is absolutely uncommitted to doing anything because you must or have to, and the means to pursue those things you want to be doing, is the most accurate measure of success you’ll find.”

Most people confuse the phrase in the last part of that sentence, “...and the means to pursue those things you want to be doing ...” as the measure of success. But, having the means and not the time is absolutely useless and some folks have found out either just before or just after their heart attack or stroke. You see I know more and more folks who have begun to reconsider how much they have in terms of “means” in favor of how much they have in terms of “time.” And, these folks are opting to make more from less.

These folks are simplifying their lives in every direction, e.g.: smaller homes, more carefully chosen vacations, less “stuff” they need or want to own (which serves one well when you choose for a smaller home), moving away from the “big metro areas” into more remote and often more beautiful locations for their primary residence ... some folks I know have even taken to moving permanently to their favorite vacation locations as their primary residences. What’s interesting is that these folks are not perceiving their life experience as simpler but rather as more full, complete and whole when I speak with them. They have opted out of the system’s definition of “success” and have begun to redefine it for themselves. In part this redefinition includes doing what they want not necessarily what they “should.”

Very early on in this journey of mine I made a decision to do what I wanted with my life. That decision included dropping out from the standard schooling track, even though I was top honors student when I tried and a very good student even when I didn’t. I just realized at the time that for me an endless track of classroom schooling imposed on me by teachers who would demand that I prove that I’d learned what they wanted me to wasn’t the path to take to keep what I already had, and would more likely corrupt many of my best intincts. I had done enough schooling in school, and had enough schooling outside of school to know that for me what I wanted and needed to learn wasn’t contained in those hallowed halls nor held by those hollow educators.

Now, some folks would look at this and suggest is was a first step to failure and lack of accomplishment (and many did) ... “Oh no! What will you do with a good ("approved") education?”

Now you’ll notice that word “approved” in parentheses there in that quote, yet you’ll seldom hear anyone using it in actual speech. However, that’s exactly what they mean ... that any education that isn’t approved by the system isn’t actually to be considered an education at all. And more and more as we “move forward” the requirement to do anything comes with a price tag on it of having taken the “approved” education to get your ticket punched first. In many ways education today is the “mark of the beast” and if you don’t have it you will have to fight tooth and claw to get pass the prejudice of choosing your own path.

So what do I think the role of formal schooling really is about then? Well that depends on who you ask. For some incredibly gifted and sincere teachers it is a way to expand their student’s minds and their lives. I’ve seen and even worked with those kinds of teachers ... and they are brilliant to be around. For others it is a way to impose the mores of society on the students in their care, teaching them what is right and wrong, what has to be known by everyone for their own good, and in some case literally how to think about things according so some proscribed protocol. Unfortunately in my limited experience, as a student, as a parent, as a faculty member and as a citizen of this great nation that later type is much more common. The system is designed not to educate but to teach:

“educate" [To bring up or guide the powers of, as a child; to develop and cultivate, whether physically, mentally, or morally]

“teach" [To impart the knowledge of; to give intelligence concerning; to impart, as knowledge before unknown, or rules for practice; to inculcate as true or important; to exhibit impressively; as, to teach arithmetic, dancing, music, or the like; to teach morals.]

You see the major difference here is that real education is about helping what’s inside to come to the surface and manifest fully, i.e.: “To bring up or guide the powers of, as a child”, whereas what teaching is about is imparting from the outside in what is desirable for the teacher, i.e.: “To impart the knowledge of; to give intelligence concerning; to impart, as knowledge before unknown, or rules for practice; to inculcate as true or important” This major and critical difference so often goes completely overlooked and therefore missed by even really well meaning parents, and many teachers as well, when they think about schooling children.

And now as I continue to keep my vigil regarding how we are schooling and inculcating our children into our society, as I listen to the drivel of the politicians calling for more schooling and more funding for schooling, I am in ever greater distress. I am distressed specifically because I don’t believe those politicians are among the innocent and ignorant masses who tout the wonders of “Getting a good ("approved") education.” I think they are in fact part of the very system that wants to inculcate children to follow the rules, to do what they are told, not to upset the apple cart or think for themselves.

One of the things I point to most often is how school is more and more becoming a place in the U.S. of A. where you’re not allowed to “fail.” They are teaching that “failure is bad.” For example:

*"There are folks who are against the whole [valedictorian] idea because they don’t like the competitiveness,” says Michael Carr of the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

*In Texas, Indiana and Kentucky, several schools are parading 10 or more of their top students as “valedictorians” on graduation day—making a joke out of a once-great honor. According to the dean of admissions at one California college, some high schools are honoring as many as 50 to 100 “valedictorians.”

This is a total joke!!! What do these folks think they are doing??? Can you imagine in our evolution if some tribal elder had decided on this kind of utter and abject stupidity? “Bruce I know you don’t see so well, and your spear arm isn’t as strong as Larry’s, but we want you to feel like you are just as valued as any other hunter or warrior in this tribe so I want you to lead the hunt today, HO!” That tribe died off, they have no descendants, their genes have been crushed under the hooves of the buffalo that Bruce could neither see nor spear ... gone for all time ... THANK G-D!!!

Yet this is exactly what we are doing to our students today, forcing them to deep mediocrity. For instance Bruce may have been the best woodworker in the tribe, he may have “invented” the practice of hardening spears and arrows in fire. Yet because he was never allowed to fail he was never forced to find his own path, the one where he naturally excelled and where his natural proclivities and fascinations would allow him to excel. This is the very path I find education in the West on today. The path that’s about mediocrity and producing the right kind of worker bee for the system not for the bee. For example:

*"But this Kumbaya attitude has also seeped into classrooms, with potentially serious consequences. A school board in New Hampshire, concerned about undermining the self-image of kids, voted earlier this year to end the practice of breaking students into different groups and teaching them according to their ability. So now the school is “leveling” the groups and teaching everyone together.”

And our freaking genius politicians keep talking about more education and education as the great equalizer (there’s a real revealing statement if I ever heard one) ... and not a peep about real education reform! Not one politician has the guts to stand up to the NEA or the AFT and say, “NO MORE ... NO MORE FUNDING FOR OUR FAILING SCHOOLS ... OR THE SYSTEM THEY SUPPORT! And, it’s not about the schools it’s about the process, the very core pedagogy that we need to revisit.

Somewhere along the way we lost our impetus to test ourselves, and in so testing ourselves find out our limits ... and our strengths. We seem to have built a system where the average became good enough and there was little to no reason to strive for excellence. We have derided those who have achieved excellence and seek to tear down each and every accomplishment that identifies someone as elite. Oh, it’s okay if the system that produces elite performance gets some credit, but not the individual. You just need to read the gossip papers and magazines, to note their sales volume, to collect the headlines they tout and you’ll know all you need to about how we love to see our heroes destroyed in the most public and eviscerating possible manner.

Yet it is in failure that we learn about how to succeed. Success, and even more so excellence, requires risk. But we are taught to be afraid to fail. The message of the larger society is that your failures will be publicly displayed and used to diminish your achievements no matter how great. We are building a culture that derides the “tallest poppy,” the individual who dares to stick their head up and above others as they strive for excellence. When what we need are more opportunities to fail early on so we learn the critical lesson that failure is temporary, as is success. This lesson above all others allows us to take grand risks. Knowing that failure is only temporary and in fact most often a step on the way to the success we desire will allow and encourage us to take the risks required to succeed wildly.

The danger here to the “status quo” resides in the corollary lesson that taking risk, failing and defining success by your own terms will cause many people to opt out, to choose their own path and not the one most desired for them to take by the society they are instructed to serve like good worker bees. The real education is finding out who you are, with all of the accompanying lessons that come with testing yourself to the very limits of your being. Yet even the most simple opportunity to test oneself in the crucible of becoming educated, i.e.: finding out what’s inside that you can bring to the surface and manifest on the outside, has become an issue for concern in our schools, those bastions of good ("approved") education:

*"No more honor rolls, valedictorians, letter grades—how long before schools start to ban simple games like tag? Oh, wait: That happened at a Santa Monica, California, school just a couple of years ago. “In this game, there is a ‘victim,’ or ‘It,’ which creates a self-esteem issue,” the principal explained in a newsletter to parents. Tag would no longer be allowed, unless supervised by adults. Your lesson for the day, kids: School is no place for winners.”

So instead of winners, winners in the game of living their own lives, we are producing a country of well “educated” very busy people without much of a life at all.

I appreciate that I am as busy as I am, but not to busy to stop and smell the rose ... every day. I appreciate that by some fluke I both had the intuition to step away before the inculcation took over completely and convinced me that my role as dictated to me by others was more critical to my well being than stepping away, taking the risks, failing ... and succeeding ... to find my own path. I appreciate that along that path I was fortunate enough to find a few amazing teachers who opened me up to myself ... and to the wonders of this world we share. And, I appreciate that despite all the challenges I see around me, especially at times in our own backyard, I still live in a country where I can write and publish this post at my will.

[*NOTE: All the quotes about schools I’ve used above come from Outrageous! “A” Is for Average Not achievement or accomplishment or All-American. Not anymore. by Michael Crowley at Readers Digest online (http://www.rd.com).]

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

Jump Into 2009 With A Running Start ...  Join PERSONAL ENHANCEMENT This December ...

I’ll be presenting the last Personal Enhancement programs this year in England on December 8th, and then again in Barcelona on December 10th. Both programs are limited to only ten people each, and are almost always in high demand. This is the only public program I run where I work privately with people in a group format. For a full day I work on issues that the participants want me to work with them on, deliver a ton of material of creating exquisite performances in relation to the issues that come up, and have no agenda whatsoever except delivering on the requests participants bring into the room.

Essentially what I’m doing is hours of private work that I normally charge ten times the amount of what this program fee is for the entire day! If you’re interested give Nancy a call at +1/609-275-1845 or email her at nsriggio@josephriggio.com for full program details and to register.

As always I take participants into these programs on a first come, first serve basis and when I have ten in each program the doors will close for 2008! If you know that you want to kick off 2009 running you can even come to both programs, in England and in Spain, and pay half the normal program fee for the second program ... but please act now ... call or email Nancy today ... I hate having to turn people down because we’ve overrun the room and you’ve asked me too late.

“Sarah Palin is smart, really, really smart.” Hey I have your attention now, eh?

I’ve said from the start of this thing ... from the moment that the unknown Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, was selected by the McCain campaign as the Vice Presidential nominee ... that this woman was not to be overlooked (as she so often has been). In fact I’ve said she’s a rare talent in her own right ... as I continue to watch this thing unfold I’m ever more convinced that my position is valid. Well what can I say ... I’m an unabashed fan, and I think Sarah’s a winner even if Obama and Biden wind up as the ones going to Washington this time around.

Now another absolutely unlikely voice has shown up saying very much the same thing and more ... a leftist, liberal, feminist voice at that! But why listen to me ... have look for yourself ...

Howdy all ya’ all,

I got more than a few phone calls and comments after my last blog post about how Sarah Palin won in the Vice Presidential debate. And now here’s something I thought I’d frankly never see ... a true blue, dyed in the wool, Democratic feminist defending Sarah Palin for being really, really smart! You read that absolutely correctly ... “really, really smart!”. Well run me ragged and put me away wet ...

Let’s start here:

“Now by “smart,” I don’t refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don’t really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I’d heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts.”

WOW! that’s heavy duty smart and I agree without having spent any time with Governor Palin myself like the author of the statement above has had the privilege of doing herself. So, who’s calling Governor Sarah Palin smart? ... Elaine Lafferty, former editor-in-chief at Ms. Magazine. This is no fluffy hair-brained, right-to-life, religious right Christian nutter ... but a full-blown leftist, liberal Pro-Choice feminist. She worked with Sarah Palin when Palin was crafting her “glass-ceiling” speech. She spent time with her traveling as Palin was on the campaign trail and gives us a very different image then the mainstream media has been blasting us with (to say nothing of the even more extreme liberal media). If nothing else it would be worth seeing what else she has to say, huh? Here’s another example of what Ms. Lafferty has to say about Sarah Palin:

“What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.”

I think that most people just aren’t willing to do the homework necessary to get the facts for themselves ... what I call the refusal of doing due diligence. Instead they will take the surface impressions they get from the thirty second sound bites, the criticisms hurled at public figures, and the willingness to be swayed by the endless inundation and indoctrination based on the “facts” as the mainstream media would have you believe them. I just went through an exchange with a friend of mine about the ridiculous claims about Obama’s false birth certificate ... which took all of ten minutes to totally undermine by going to the sources myself. TEN MINUTES! ... just 10 minutes was all it took me to completely undermine a false accusation that has been rampant on the Internet for weeks now. Yet my observation has been that most people would rather accept the pablum their fed than to do what it takes to gather and chew on the facts themselves.

But, back to Sarah Palin, huh? I’m just not surprised to here another smart, credible source calling Governor Palin smart ... smart as hell in fact! It’s really evident to me in watching this women that she’s not the country bumpkin the media has made her out to be. If fact I really do see her as the most honest kind of American politician ... someone who saw something going on that she didn’t abide with and took grass roots action to get into the system, become a part of it and change things from the inside out.

Now I know this posting may not be making me a whole lot of new friends in some places, but my job has been to “call ‘em like I sees ‘em” and I ain’t about to stop doing that now. Of course I self-selected this job and I love my work. I’ve never set myself up to make friends, even if I do on occasion hope to influence a few people here and there. I think that we will not have seen the last of the smart and clever woman running for the post of Vice-President of the United States of America even if Barrack Obama is successful in his bid with Senator Biden this time around ... in fact I wouldn’t be too surprised if she’s running for the top post next time around ... and wins it hands down! FWIW, while I’m none to happy about her running mate these days, if I remain feeling like I am today ... when she does make that run for President I’ll be working on her campaign ... now put that in your collective pipes and smoke it!!!

In closing I thought it would be interesting to here what Elaine Lafferty had to say about Governor Sarah Palin in closing her article about her on The Daily Beast:

“But here is the good news: women, citizens of America’s high and low culture, the Economist and People magazine readers, will get it. They got it with Hillary even when feminist leaders were not supporting her or doing so half-heartedly. Yes, Palin is a harder sell, she looks and sounds different, and one can rightfully oppose her based on abortion policies. If you only vote on how a person personally feels about abortion, you will never want her to darken your door. If you care about anything else, she will continue to intrigue you. As Time’s Nancy Gibbs noted a few weeks ago, quoting bioethicist Tom Murray, “Sympathy and subtlety are seasonings rarely applied to political red meat.” Will Palin’s time come next week? I don’t know. But her time will come.”

If I’ve captured your interest at all read the full article at The Daily Beast, and have a listen to the YouTube video of Palin giving her “Glass Ceiling Speech” while you’re there. If you tried to get this on YouTube, you’ll find only the preliminary comments that have nothing to do with her actual speech. However, what you’ll most want to attend to is her skill at delivering this speech, her connection with audience and her general style of presentation ... she’s a pro! Use a positive, excitatory bias as your perceptual lens ... listen for her presumptions ... listen to her building “yes sets” ... listen to her logical chaining (she’s especially good at this particular hypnotic skill) ... listen to the social proofs ... listen to the way she connects with a specific audience, calling them out right up front! ... she’s a very skillful hypnotic speaker ... get over the prejudice you might go in with and decide you’ll listen for what she does right first. Then decide on whether you agree or disagree with the content, after you’ve spent the time to listen to her skillset as it manifests in her speaking style.

Not making any new friends in Nuevo California ... or trying to either.

Best regards,

Dr. Joseph Riggio ... social ontology gadfly

Princeton, NJ ... and around the world ...

Jump Into 2009 With A Running Start ...  Join PERSONAL ENHANCEMENT This December ...

I’ll be presenting the last Personal Enhancement programs this year in England on December 8th, and then again in Barcelona on December 10th. Both programs are limited to only ten people each, and are almost always in high demand. This is the only public program I run where I work privately with people in a group format. For a full day I work on issues that the participants want me to work with them on, deliver a ton of material of creating exquisite performances in relation to the issues that come up, and have no agenda whatsoever except delivering on the requests participants bring into the room.

Essentially what I’m doing is hours of private work that I normally charge ten times the amount of what this program fee is for the entire day! If you’re interested give Nancy a call at +1/609-275-1845 or email her at nsriggio@josephriggio.com for full program details and to register.

As always I take participants into these programs on a first come, first serve basis and when I have ten in each program the doors will close for 2008! If you know that you want to kick off 2009 running you can even come to both programs, in England and in Spain, and pay half the normal program fee for the second program ... but please act now ... call or email Nancy today ... I hate having to turn people down because we’ve overrun the room and you’ve asked me too late.

There’s a common expression in the field of sef-improvement, a favorite among personal and professional development specialists ... “success leaves a trail” ... meaning that when you know what to look for you can track the patterns of success. Well the same thing is true of power as well.

IMO last night’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden (DE) and Governor Sarah Palin (AK) was a display of power with plenty of evidence left behind for the astute to track ... here are some of my comments on those patterns of Power and Language ... and FWIW, I for one think Ms. Palin came out the winner (take a peek and find out why I say so ...)!!!

Well folks ...

Last time out ... I posted here that I was betting on Sarah Palin in last night’s VP debate. So let’s start up front with the headline from http://wwww.msnbc.com immediately following the debate last night.

Palin pushes wedge between Biden and Obama

That’s a very powerful first impression that the analysts at MSNBC came up with based on their viewing of the debate. From a viewer point of view (mine of course) what stood out were how many times Sarah Palin pointed out how Joe Biden had disagreed with and even spoke dismissively about Barack Obama as a senator, as a candidate and in terms of his readiness for assuming the office of President, that Senator Biden simply couldn’t respond to except to smile like a deer caught in the headlights because she was reading direct quotes from him ... including a real zinger about John McCain:

“(Senator ...) you said you’d be honored to run on a ticket with him.”

(Sarah Palin speaking there about a comment Joe Biden had previously made about Senator John McCain in terms of his fitness for the presidency.)

That’s hard to live down when you become the vice presidential candidate for the other side.

(I’ll come back to some of Joe Biden’s other tactics regarding John McCain at sometime I’m sure ... AND REMEMBER this is a posting about Art of Power NOT Politics!!!)

Then this mornings headline read:

Palin delivers, but doubts linger.

So overall I’d say first and foremost Sarah Palin did as I expected ... way over delivered on just about everyone’s expectations regardless of which side of the fence you’re sitting on about her readiness as a vice presidential candidate. Now remember, I’m not going political (for now) what I’m pointing to is the nature of her skills as a presenter and at working an audience.

There are common traits that virtually all power presenters display and techniques they all know how to do and use to their advantage. Whether it’s raw talent or trained skill I won’t say, but regardless these are trails that can be followed directly to lair where personal and public power lives. What I’ve been seeing and saw again last night is that Sarah Palin is a natural when it comes to being in front of an audience. For one thing she knows how to connect with an audience even through the lens of a camera. This is a trait that directors pray for in their talent, a natural affinity for the camera and a way of coming across that the camera just loves. Last night several million viewers felt that Sarah Palin was in their homes with them discussing some of the most significant topics facing the nation and world today ... that’s powerful.

Here’s a quote from Howard Fineman, an analyst from MSNBC, this morning:

First, let me say that I was wrong--ridiculously wrong--when I said on “Hardball” before the debate here in St. Louis that the event would be the longest 90 minutes of Palin’s life. No way. She loved every minute. And when Biden said at the end that he was glad to have finally met her, he was clearly lying. It was no fun for him.

That’s a very powerful thing for an analyst to say and do, admit they were wrong ... no “ridiculously wrong” so that alone would count as a major feather in Governor Palin’s cap. However he was supported in this by the behavior of the other pundits on stage just by virtue of what they largely weren’t discussing, i.e.: Palin’s failure to deliver. Instead they talked about the points that Palin made vs. those that Joe Biden made. In other words every pundit/analyst on every major network was comparing the actual political performance on the issues of Joe Biden, who’s been a senator for all of eternity and has served on every committee every created in the senate, with a woman everyone counted out as a “soccer mom” from Alaska. Yet, her she was, the self professed “soccer mom from Alaska” debating on National television one of the most erudite and experienced senators on Capitol Hill and for the most part holding her own.

Here’s another quote from Fineman that typifies what I’m referring to:

When David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, came into the spin room after the debate he didn’t bother arguing that Palin was not ready for prime time. Instead he argued that she had not successfully distanced the GOP ticket from President George Bush.


If McCain was to be judged on the wisdom of his veep pick, she did him some good Thursday night by not appearing like a deer in the headlights.”

So now you’ll watch the argument shift from whether or not Gov. Sarah Palin WON last night’s debate based on a whole new set of improvised rules ... e.g.: did she further the Republican ticket by distancing Senator McCain and herself from the Dems, did she do enough to undermine the legitimacy of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, did she do this or do that ... all spurious speculations and opinions to bolster whatever the pundits want you to think the day after the fact.

IMO here’s the bottom line, again from Fineman (but note the tone implicated in the remark about “how to field dress a moose” ... I get it, how it’s so easy to take pot shots at this lady, but even her detractors shouldn’t count her out as I’ve been saying all along ...):

“As aggressive as her performance was, it is unlikely that it moved the overall horserace numbers. But she did show that she not only knows how to field dress a moose, but to stand toe to toe with a senator.”

That’s it ... the bottom line was and is that the “little old, soccer mom” Sarah Palin went head to head with a senior senator who’s been in national televised debates twenty six times, including Presidential Primary debates ... and she stood “toe to toe” with him ... in my book, very simply - that’s a WIN!

In the next couple of days I’ll be commenting on how she did it, and mention some points about Joe Biden’s performance as well. There’s a year’s worth of material here for a student of the language of power to study ... so have at it!

Best regards,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

PS - First since I’ve now posted again since my last posting where I made the generous offer to include a copy of “Beyond the Obvious” to anyone who placed an order before my next posting (this post) that offer is now complete ... next time act more quickly ... in my world decisiveness pays (literally)!

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