Our Value Proposition

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In an earlier post I mentioned a group of men that I meet with once a month. It’s an interesting group including authors, professors, artists and consultants. Our purpose for meeting is to discuss our individual travels in the second phase of our lives and to offer honest, candid feedback. The organizer of the group coined the group name Cultural Practitioners; however, I am not quite sure what this means.

At our last monthly meeting, a group member referenced the phrase “Black Lives Matter” as an example of what’s wrong in public discussions around a wide array of social issues. His premise was that our propensity to discuss important issues from a platform of “us versus them” only further erodes our sense of community and our ability to forge shared meaning and values. What was interesting is the discussion that pursued. See, when you dig below the surface of this group of white, older men you find something very interesting. One of the group members is gay and other members have gay siblings or gay children. Some of the group members have African American significant others, or have children who have African American partners. I even found out that two of the group members are decedents of African Americans.

Our discussion was rich and complex and the depth of compassion and understanding among this group of Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Libertarians would put most Millennials to shame. In a recent interview by Jason Jarvis of author Ryan Holliday, Holliday stated that his biggest fear is the erosion of our 1st Amendment rights. As argued by Holliday, any opinion or comment that could be perceived as hurting someone else’s feelings become the target of college campus students and their faculty agitators. Effectively, they will set out to bully you and ruin you unless you embrace their groupthink.

So, what’s my point? I believe contemporary society has adopted the position that the opinions and thoughts of older men are no longer valid. In fact, some have taken the position that we are the root of everything that is bad in America. Let me state a different position. We older men can offer a much more balanced perspective on a wide array of issues, a perspective that has evolved over decades of observation, experience and mistakes. I argue that for many of my fellow brethren, we bring to the discussion both a high level of IQ and EQ. Translating our IQ and EQ into new pursuits will differentiate us from the mass of non-thinkers and simultaneously help cut through the amped up noise that represents our Nation’s current predicament. This is what being a fearless leader is all about.

#EQ