To My Heroes: David Brooks, Jonathan Haidt, Dale Carnegie and others - Who are letting me down...

I’ve never met you, but if I were to meet you, I am sure that you would be among the smartest people that I would ever meet. I only know you through the things you’ve written and occasionally I will see one of you (who is still alive) being interviewed by a podcaster or on TV. I’ve read all your books.

The things you write about are the stuff that revelations and even divine epiphanies are made of. The way you write proves just how brilliant human beings are, or should I say how incredible we can be. The knowledge you convey has the potential to fix all that is broken in our society. It is obvious to me, that you are well intended. In fact, most of you have dedicated your whole lives to improving mankind.

That is what makes it so hard for me to say this to you- You have been totally ineffective. Our society is in worse shape now than when you started your careers.

I’m sure this hard truth saddens you as much as it does me. I hope that this note will serve as a wake-up call.

I feel terrible for saying this to you, but desperate times call for desperate measures. My hope is that you will forgive me as I’ve come to know you as the forgiving type. Our society has become unglued from anything- truth or reality - that once held us together. It’s as if some indescribable force has torn us apart. There is an overwhelming sense of noise and confusion that dominates us. Everyone can feel it, yet nobody can quite put their finger on what it is. Nobody knows what truth looks like anymore. We lack foundational elements and any universal authority or shared values.

Somebody needs to do something. 

Your failures don’t mean that you are still not my heroes. Without you a future generation doesn’t stand a chance to fix what ails us, but herein lies my challenge to you.

None of your wisdom is getting through to the younger generation. Your lessons are being directed to adults, and they are not listening to you. About half of all voting adults have tuned you out and have chalked you up as an out-of-touch elitist.

What is most frustrating, is that nobody knows this better than you do! Therefore, I write to ask you to consider your own ineffectiveness, and to change your approach. We need to get your best stuff to the kids - before all is lost! 

Over 2000 years ago,

One of you, Mr. Marcus Tillius Cicero warned us about certain flaws in our nature that would prevent us from getting along with one another. He called the flaws in our wiring, “depravities of the mind”. Since then, many of you have studied the human brain extensively and have applied modern-day science to find out exactly what these depravities are. You have come to know, with precision, how and why we become closed-minded and stop listening to other viewpoints.

Today, you use fancier words to describe the complications in our brains that keep us divided. You call them cognitive distortions, which, when not accounted for early in our development, grow more harmful as we age and create the mess we find ourselves in. 

Among your findings is that we are hardwired for negative thinking. We are uniquely drawn to messages that create strong emotions; fear, lust, desire, and hate. That we are prone to choose sides and to be “groupish”. We self-select small portions of information which only reinforce existing bias. We have two sides of our brains that constantly duel with one another which produces unwanted anxiety and causes us to greatly exaggerate our fears.

Your collective bottom line; is that like many other common animals, we tend to feel our way through life, rather than think our way through it. Some of you call our most ordinary mode of cognitive functioning second gear. Others of you call it our default mode. It is while here, in this mode, that you have tried to warn us that “we enjoy the comfort of opinion, without the discomfort of thought” (JFK 1961 Yale Commencement speech). 

Collectively, you have written that without being more cognizant of our inclinations to slip into these lower gears of cognitive awareness (which include carelessness, forgetfulness, excessive pride, and arrogance) we would individually fail to maintain the temperament needed to do the complicated work of self-government.

You report that being a good citizen goes well beyond being a good person, and that being a leader of a large, diverse, and complex system of any type, (business or government) requires advanced skills and virtues which are not easily acquired or maintained. 

You have even tried to warn us about what you call the invisible factors. You know how and why we become blind to the consequences of our words, and behaviors. You write about how the spreading of misinformation, even bad jokes, creates distrust and eventually tears down any system that relies on people. You explain how even the most well-intentioned among us grow numb, and meld into something less than we had originally set out to be. You say that when a lie is told enough times, by enough people, that it becomes our reality, and our culture slowly but surely becomes shaped by myths, rather than laws. 

Such as the myth of endless American freedom- that we can say and do whatever we want. The myth that civility, moderation, and compromise are overrated values. The mistaken belief that masculinity and tough love work to organize a democracy (when the opposite is true). The myth is that people who live in poverty or those befallen by bad luck will fall into line and be good citizens under the control of those who are financially secure and blessed with good luck. And of course, the largest and deadliest of all of our American myths, the one that has us convinced that we are being indoctrinated by some “Deep Blue State” and that a universal system of education is something to be feared.

Today, as you all predicted, we are a society defined by our lowest moments and most unappealing traits. We have been relegated to mutual incomprehension, fighting a war of extremes, over false facts, and between mostly imagined enemies. We have become locked in the chains of our own ordinariness.

In this war, even simple words that used to bind us together have become sources of existential divisiveness. Words such as decency, diversity, and inclusion have become casualties of our culture wars.  In this environment, the few (about 10% of us) are successful in tearing down the many (about 90% of us) and our kids have come to believe that rudeness and one mass murder a day is normal.

In July of 2020,

I was doing some part-time teaching in the inner city schools, and my students wore upon their remarkable faces this look which I can only describe as fed-upness with the world around them. When I asked them for details, they only put their weary heads down and said, “Mr. Cort this country is so messed up”. At that same time, I sat down to write my youngest son Mikey his annual birthday card. I wanted to offer some special fatherly advice as he was also leaving for college. I was at a complete loss. Like my students, I too had grown fearful of what society was becoming. I couldn’t finish the card for my son. I felt the same dark cloud hanging over my head that my students felt. So I did it. I dropped everything. I went to the library, a place that admittedly, I hadn’t visited in years, to try to figure out what was going on. I sold my business and literally moved to an island and began to read. 

This is where I found all of you -my heroes. Pursuers of wisdom, doctors, and Ph.D.s whose books adorn the walls of the library, that hardly anyone is visiting. After a few years of searching, I realized that there were common themes in all your writing.  As it turns out and bears repeating, all of you could have predicted how bad our society would get, and in fact you have! You have also known for years exactly how we can break out of our cycle of suck and mediocrity.

You all believe that in order to share a society we need to share a common belief system or at least a similar foundation of core values. What I have found most astonishing is that thousands of you agree on what that belief system is. Although you write about it in different ways, it all boils down to what is called Natural Law.  1. That human beings were given a special dispensation to reason and to understand right and wrong, like no other animal in the world. 2.  That the intelligence and virtue we gain rather naturally are meant to be applied for the common good because we are all born by the same creator. 3. That nature represents all that is unknown and therefore we are to be humbled by her vastness, and live our lives with deference, with modesty, and in perpetual search of wisdom.

Finally, we were not meant to be ordinary, (which means with no remarkable features). Rather, we were born to be as extraordinary as Mother Nature herself. 

All of our founding fathers believed in the natural laws. These specific laws were the foundation upon which our Constitution was written and which all other laws were intended to be built upon. My heroes among you to name a few, Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, each warned us what would happen if we allowed each other to lose sight of these principles upon which ordered liberty relies. Most of the world's religions are rooted in these ideas and principles. Walk into any place of worship and you will hear of them. 

Your writings about the reality of the natural laws, and the consequences of our not following them, contain pure objective truth. It is so simple what you have been telling us. That is, like any other game, the game of life has rules, and when we don't follow the rules, we lose the game. 

It's become obvious that we are losing this game. The only thing we can all agree on today is that there is something very wrong with us. Particularly as it relates to our national politics. Yet because of our fears and other cognitive distortions which you have written about, we do not listen to anything you have to say. 

What we are seeing in our society year after year, is the free fall we take from arrogance to self-righteousness, to groupish division, and then ultimately hate. We continue to run afoul of the rules and bad things keep happening to us.  If the society we live in today is not proof enough then I don’t know what is.

However, we have another Presidential election fast approaching (November 2024) and more proof that we are violating nature's simple laws, is about to jump up on a national debate stage. The candidates will no doubt talk all over each other, point fingers, and blame each other, and nothing will change.

Just as nothing changed back in 1996, 2000, 2004, or 2008, etc., etc. They will read from the same script and make the same points they did decades ago. They will endlessly debate the size and scope of the federal government and not be successful in achieving peace or harmony within Congress or among the American people. Few of them will ask us for our votes based on their own accomplishments. Instead, they will talk lowly of their opponent, and make us all feel lower about ourselves and the human race. Rest assured not one of them will answer the questions posed, but instead will try to score points that they think will play to our vulnerabilities and cause us to vote out of fear and according to myths - not reality. We will likely flip administrations (again) and nothing will improve. It never does and it never will. The natural laws have assured us of that, because the natural laws make up our reality.

Our non-philosopher politicians never fail to overlook the only laws that truly matter. They never first achieve a common set of foundational values. We can't make policy together if we aren’t at least first coming from some place of common values and agreement. When we get rid of extreme positions, and find the middle, we can trust each other, regardless of the temporary gaffe or mistakes we humans make from time to time.  

But we do not listen. Sadly, it has become apparent that even you, my heroes, are no match against our myths. Your collective understanding of what has us on the brink of chaos could not be more clear. You have written, for centuries, about why people become extreme, and how the extremists come to define our reality - and yet there is nothing that any of you have done to stop it. 

In fairness to you, I want to acknowledge that your work has no doubt helped individuals become better people, however, my thesis is simple; collectively we are failing. All of us adults, by not helping younger people see through the noise and confusion and by not having the courage to stand up for such basic principles, rooted in what we have always and forever have in common, -which is our own deep well of goodness - we have failed the younger generation.

Not only that we are also disrespecting them, and they can feel this disrespect. That is why I am writing to you, and challenging you the way that I am.  I need your help, and I’ve become rather desperate…  

A few years ago, not long after I sat down to write that birthday card, I started a website. I named it gettingalong.com. Because your knowledge isn’t relatable for young people, I started to summarize and package your best stuff for kids. Now don’t you worry, I have accurately cited your work. The last thing I want to do is take credit for your brilliance. (As a side note, one of you is David Goggins and I wouldn’t dare mess with David. He is the guy who did 4030 pull-ups in 17 hours due to his mental strength. His first book is called “Can’t Hurt Me”. I’ve read it two times and I know that David could hurt me.)

Although it took me several years (I’m not as smart as you all) I finally finished my book. Entitled, Letters to Mikey - Messages of Hope and Optimism for Young Americans. It if wasn't for you, I would have never finished that birthday card to my son.  It was recently published on Amazon and I hope you like it.

Nobody loves you more than I do. But we have a huge challenge on our hands. While it is true that every human being is born with the capacity to sacrifice or own self-interest for the common good, the fact is, that when we don’t use our gifts, we lose them, and our society is proof that we lose just enough people who are then, in turn, having success creating a false reality and poisoning our society for our kids. We can’t possibly help our kids see through the confusion unless we teach them the basics of how to hold onto their higher gifts (Natural Law 101). We’ve seen how difficult this work can be. 

Therefore, I’m begging you, please forget about the adults, and repackage all your advice (while you are still alive) for our kids. There are so many organizations out there that are trying to change adults… Where has that gotten us? We simply can’t teach old dogs new tricks. Our only chance is to get to the kids.

One of you, Winston Churchill, once said “It is not enough to have said that you are doing your very best, one must succeed in doing what is necessary”. I hope that you will join my journey at www.gettingalong.com . This website is the home of the non-profit Getting Along Academy Inc. whose mission will be to tell your story: to help our kids retain their gifts and regain their confidence in America as well as their fellow human beings. With a focus on the universal truths found in the Natural Law we can ensure the next generation the peace and harmony in a future lifetime that they deserve, and for which was intended for them.

Thank you in advance. (End - To my Hero’s)

Welcome to my Substack.

Glenn Cort 

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We are Ready for Change! Let's do this. Please join the 2030 Getting Along Challenge at www.gettingalong.com  No Finger Pointing. No Blame. Just a Better Society.