Choice-based vs. Rule-based

Some Thoughts on the Implications of the Choice-based vs. Rule-based Models

Introduction
I believe that the choice-based/rule-based model as presented in Mr. Ferruggia's article has applicability far beyond the scope presented in the original article. Mr. Ferruggia's examples were drawn from the software development environment. I first read this article shortly after I had completed a project in which the primary user was a highly choice-based individual (a former programmer) who had a group of extremely rule-based individuals (accountants and CPA's) working for him. Needless to say, there was a lot of tension in the organization, and the project was challenging, to put it mildly. When I read the article, it was like the proverbial light bulb going on in my head. I instantly understood what had been happening.

As time went on, I began to identify more behaviors, in both people and organizations, that seemed to be easily identifiable as either rule-based or choice-based. This led me to re-examine many of the behavioral patterns that I had observed in society from the basis of this model. The results of that examination were striking.

For example, why do so many business initiatives seem to go terribly wrong, when the original idea seemed so intuitively correct? Using this model, the answer is both simple and obvious. The originators of these initiatives are always highly choice-based individuals who have "had a vision" of some profound way in which things can be improved. They become proselytizers of the idea, and soon convert other equally choice-based people to "the cause." If the idea is truly workable (and if the planets are correctly aligned, etc.), then management may be convinced to implement the idea in a proof-of-concept project. Since this project is inevitably staffed with mostly choice-based people who grasp the underlying concept behind the vision, or at least is led directly by the originator of the concept, it will usually succeed. Management then decides to implement this radical change throughout the corporation.

And that's where things start to go downhill. Since the majority of people are rule-based by nature, it is inevitable that most people will not "get it." The frustrated visionary is then compelled to formalize his/her vision into a set of rules that, if followed, will get the follower "pretty close" to the desired result. More rule-based people are trained to implement these rules, and they are sent out to see that the rules are followed throughout the corporation.

But all rules are merely generalizations, and cannot provide the adaptable guidance that a visionary concept must have. Very soon these rules are applied in ways which are contradictory to the intent of the vision. The rule-based people who have been charged with their enforcement lack the vision to know when the rules are inappropriate. The result is that the enforcement of the rule quite often has an effect that is exactly the opposite of what was envisioned. The process becomes pessimized rather than optimized.

A Silly (but True) Example
The worst example I have seen of this was at a very large manufacturing company. An initiative was begun on the shop floor to make it easier to identify missing tools when those tools were shared by a group of people. Tool boards were built to store the tools, with a painted outline of each tool. You could tell at a glance which tools were there and which were missing. If you took a tool, you would hang a tag with your name on it in it's place. A great idea, intuitively obvious and easy to implement.

When they decided to implement it company-wide, including in office areas, it got out of hand. The people selected to implement the rules were, of course, the rule-based people. It wound up first taking the form of standardizing the 3-ring binders for documents and putting a diagonal stripe across each set so you could tell at a glance if one was gone. That wasn't too damaging; it just cost a small fortune in binders and reprinted covers. But some groups took it even further. They required that you have taped-off areas on your desk for your stapler, telephone, etc. Perhaps they thought you'd be unable to recognize a telephone if it wasn't in the correct area. This could be very confusing, of course, if the item in the space marked "stapler" suddenly started ringing. Chaos could easily result, to say nothing of the Workmens' Comp claims resulting from people stapling their ears.

The most depressing aspect, to me, was that the people who devised these implementations were completely serious. Since rule-based people don't feel the need to understand the purpose behind a rule, they are unable to recognize the impact of blind adherence to the rule. "We have to apply this rule because it is the rule." "Has the rule been applied?" "Yes." "Then the result must be correct."

Sometimes extremely rule-based behavior can be a form of passive-aggressive resistance to change. A person who doesn't want to adopt the new rules will apply them in completely illogical ways and then say, "See, it doesn't work." This is a subtle form of sabotage.

A Tragic (but True) Example
Perhaps the worst and most damaging examples of the degeneration of great ideas into meaningless rules lie in the area of religion. Religion is arguably one of the most important explorations available to mankind, dealing as it does with our place in the universe and with our relationship with our fellow humans (to say nothing of the multitudinous non-human coinhabitants of this pebble). Those people who found religions, or inspire others to found one in their name, are truly visionaries. They are, I believe, all driven by the same desire - to improve the human condition. Nothing could be more noble, nor more needed.

Yet the transcendental vision experienced by these people is perhaps the hardest of all to communicate to others. We are way beyond labeled tool-boards here. These visions do not simply change minor behaviors. They change peoples' whole context for their understanding of existence and meaning. It changes the "why" behind everything you do.

And therein lies the problem. Rule-based people, as noted in Mr. Ferruggia's article, don't want to know the "why." They simply want to know what actions to take. Some of the Prophets even made reference to this directly, as when some of the Apostles were asking Jesus to describe heaven to them. He replied (and I'm paraphrasing somewhat), "You don't understand when I speak to you about earthly things. How can you hope to understand about heavenly things?" This is the classic complaint of a choice-based person when trying to communicate with resolutely rule-based individuals. So in the end, he tried to boil his whole revelation down to some simple rules for them to follow, in the hope that, if they followed these rules, it would get them close to something like what he had in mind.

Of couse, that started to deteriorate soon after his departure. Arguments arose over the precise interpretations of his teachings (a favorite pastime for the rule-based). Fortunately there were no staplers back then, or else the whole thing might have died out quickly, since the Band-Aid wouldn't be invented for another 20 centuries.

Since religions measure their lives in centuries and millenia, whereas businesses measure theirs generally in years and sometimes centuries, it provides that much more time for the true meaning of a religion to be eroded out, leaving only a meaningless shell of rituals whose adherents are increasingly rule-based, since promotion within the hierarchy is based on external adherence to the rules. Bitter arguments ensue on topics as irrelevant as the particular language to be used in the rituals, or acceptable modes of dress. In the end, the true meaning of the religion reveals itself only to those few choice-based individuals who have the determination and vision to see the original intent, like the person who perceives a dinosaur by seeing the fossilized imprint of it's tracks.

This tragic deterioration results in the rule-based followers (and leaders) of those religions engaging in acts which are absolutely antithetical to the true purpose and intent of the founders of those religions. Whether it is the torture and slaughter of "heretics" in the Middle Ages (or the Middle East), or the bombing of medical clinics, or the suicide bombings of office buildings, it is a negation of one of the fundamental commandments of almost all great religions, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." The spirit of love which so moved the founders of the religions is replaced with the spirit of hatred for any who do not share the blind devotion to a hollow set of rules whose meaning has been forgotten.

The Circle of Empathy
At this point I want to introduce another useful concept called the "Circle of Empathy." This concept appears to have originated with Jaron Lanier, the inventor of virtual reality. As he puts it, "The notion of the circle of empathy is that each person draws a circle around them where inside the circle are things that deserve empathy and outside the circle are things that don't."

In terms of other people, those who fall within one's circle of empathy are accorded full human status, if you will, while those outside the circle can be reduced to a less-than human characterization. For example, if the boundary of your circle of empathy is defined by skin color, it becomes easy to treat people of other skin colors as less than human. Thus they can be bought, sold, abused, killed, etc. without suffering the same pangs of conscience one would feel for inflicting such offenses on a fellow human. This allowed slaveholders in the South (both the United States and Africa) to attend church and sincerely believe that they were good people.

When combined with the distinction between choice-based and rule-based people, this concept becomes quite informative. Rule-based people tend to define their circles of empathy in terms of those who adhere to the same rules and those who don't. They see only those characteristics that distinguish themselves from others.

Choice-based people have the ability to see beyond the differences and recognize the similarities in others. This is what allows actors to project themselves into other roles, even when the roles are very different from their own character. By seeing the similarities, they expand their circles of empathy. This may explain why people in the entertainment industry seem to be more "liberal" than other groups (for example, CEO's or religious fundamentalists).

It also explains why liberal organizations can appear so fragmented. As Harry S. Truman once observed, when asked why the Democratic Party seemed so disorganized, "There are many ways to move forward. There is only one way to stand still."

Rule-based thinking leads to a very black and white view of the world. There is either the current set of rules or there is chaos. Only this set of rules will work, and if someone rejects this set of rules, then they must be advocating either chaos or the polar opposite of the rules.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. It is only the inability of rule-based people to conceive of alternatives that leads them to this erroneous view. The most common example of this is the frequently stated belief that anyone who criticises this country is a traitor and should leave. "America, love it or leave it." Does that mean these people don't try to correct their children's bad behavior? Criticising them must mean that they don't love them.

Rule-Based Mentality and Manipulation of Opinion
The ability to distinguish "this" from "not-this" has actually been the basis of the Scientific Revolution, so it isn't a bad ability in and of itself, but when it is equated to a moral imperative - "good" versus "bad" - it can be dangerous, especially when these distinctions are based on properties that have no intrinsic good or bad value. (At this point, I expect some rule-based person will say, "Well, if you can't define good and bad, then you must be incapable of having any moral standard." This would be a perfect example of the point I made in the previous paragraph.)

The willingness of rule-based people to accept a set of rules simply because they are rules makes them susceptible to the worst abuses of propaganda. A set of rules can be presented that actually has no basis in reality and, if repeated frequently and emphatically enough, particularly in the absence of any dissenting view, becomes accepted as fact. The Nazis knew this and used it to kill six million Jews and three million Catholics.

Despots (and would-be despots) always look for opportunities to use threats to the country as an excuse to impose stricter controls over the populace. As Hermann Goering said, "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country." Today, the current administration is using the threat of terrorism to undermine Constitutional rights. "If you oppose the PATRIOT Act, you're supporting terrorism!" No middle ground. Black and white.

This was presaged in George Orwell's "1984" in which the world was divided into three nations. Each nation was always at war with one nation and in alliance with the other. The populace was so accepting of new pronouncements from the government that, in the middle of a war rally, all the signs would be changed and the alliances would have switched, and no one would recognize that it had been reversed. The response of the people was, "We've always been at war with them." They would blindly accept whatever the government said.

Rule-Based Mentality and Moral Relativism
It is ironic that rule-based thinking which originated in ethical systems can lead to completely hypocritical actions. Following World War II, the world divided itself into two camps - the "Godless Communists" and the "God-Fearing, Freedom-Loving West." All the countries of the world were required to swear allegiance to (or at least state their affiliation with) one side or the other. Neutrality was not an option. If a government tried to remain neutral, or, worse yet, become nationalistic, a coup would be engineered to remove the troublemaker. Switzerland, of course, was an exception, because that was where everyone, Capitalist and Communist alike, stored their stolen wealth.

The categorization of a nation determined the manner in which it's actions were viewed and presented to the world. For example, in the infamous "Killing Fields" of Laos under the Pol Pot regime (Communist), approximately one million people died, many from starvation, as the Khmer Rouge relocated millions to collective farms. The original claim of two million dead was almost immediately discredited, but this hasn't stopped the press and the right wing from continuing to use that number whenever they talk about it. What is never mentioned is the fact that Laos was facing starvation from the defoliation caused by Agent Orange, which had been employed by American forces during the Vietnam War.

At about the same time, the Indonesian government of General Suharto, which had come to power in a CIA-engineered coup that cost one million lives by conservative estimates, invaded East Timor. Over the next decade or so, fully one-third of the East Timorese population was killed. The United States government not only applauded the Suharto regime as a bastion against Communism (and therefore by extension, a supporter of democracy) but also supplied arms and financial aid to support the genocide.

Another example is the series of coups, revolutions, counter-revolutions, etc. that took place in Central and South America during the 1980's. The actions of both sides were virtually indistinguishable, marked by murder, torture, rape and other massive violations of human rights. Schools and medical clinics were destroyed, religious leaders and workers were killed. Objective evidence would reveal little difference between the sides involved in the struggles, and yet it was presented to the public as a struggle for democracy over dictatorship.

We present ourselves as the defenders of democracy in the world, but our own example in the case of Nicaragua reveals a somewhat different reality. Without reviewing the whole history of the Somoza Regime and our support for it, let's suffice it to say that the Contras (whom we supported) were the remnants of the old Somoza Regime. An election had been held after Somoza had been deposed, and the Sandinistas had won in an election that had been deemed reasonably fair and representative by neutral observers. In spite of this, the U.S. decided to support the Contras. This decision was a contentious one in Congress, and eventually support was withdrawn. Congress passed a bill prohibiting the expenditure of any further resources to support the Contras.

The Reagan Administration didn't like this decision and embarked on a covert program of support. The source of the funding was from sales of arms (principally anti-aircraft missile parts and supplies) to Iran. Now, at that time, trade with Iran was illegal. They were considered hostile to the U.S., since their revolution had deposed Shah Reza Pahlavi and replaced him with an anti-Western religious leader called Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran was engaged in a war with Iraq (led by Saddam Hussein, our ally) and was rapidly depleting its supplies of anti-aircraft missiles (which we had originally sold to them under the Shah's regime).

As a side note, one of the reasons they were running low on these supplies was because we had been encouraging Iraq to launch air strikes against Iran. So, in the interests of democracy, we were selling arms to an enemy country that was engaged in a war with our ally, in order to fund an illegal operation against a country whose government had been democratically elected.

A further twist is that the CIA allowed Central American drug cartels to use their planes to ship drugs back into the U.S. after the weapons had been delivered. This apparently was a "quid pro quo" for allowing the CIA to operate in their territory.

The final irony is that the Administration tried to cover it all up by claiming "national security" as an excuse for not releasing the documentation on this debacle. And even after Col. Oliver North and Adm. John Poindexter were convicted for their parts in this sorry episode, their convictions were overturned by a panel of judges, one of whom (Laurence Silberman) had been Reagan's contact with Iran's Khomeini regime in arranging that our people who were being held hostage in Tehran not be released until after the 1980 election, thus preventing a public-relations coup for President Carter. North, who spearheaded the Iran-Contra operation, is now a highly paid speaker on the right-wing talk show circuit. Poindexter, who had been convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government and destroying evidence, is now Director of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, a program to electronically spy on American citizens. Not exactly democracy's finest hour.

While rule-based people criticize what they call the "moral relativism" of choice-based people, the reality is that rule-based thinking is what leads to moral relativism. The actions of those who are seen as following the same rules are justified on the basis of their inclusion as allies, instead of on the basis of their acts. Morality is equated to professed acceptance of a set of rules, rather than being a standard of behavior by which individual actions may be judged. In fact, it is an implementation of Marx's adage that "The ends justify the means." This is the ultimate moral relativism: If I do it, it's good; if my enemy does it, it's bad. This is utter hypocrisy.

What appears as moral relativism on the part of choice-based people is actually a statement of higher trust in individuals to find their own conscience. Rather than presenting a set of ironclad rules, it encourages people to discover their own morality, which ultimately springs from within. This does not deny the existence of God as rule-based Fundamentalists claim. On the other hand, it doesn't confirm it, either. It merely says, "It is up to you to decide what you believe." It preserves the individual's right to subscribe to any beliefs without coercion from others. That is actually one of the principles on which this nation was founded. The fact that most (not all) of our Founding Fathers subscribed to one or the other of several versions of Christianity did not prevent them from making allowances for diversity of belief within the fundamental structure of our country.

Further, it does not mean that all actions are acceptable within the context of society. If your chosen belief involves human sacrifice, be prepared to suffer some sanctions from society. But if your belief requires that you wear particular clothes or wear your hair a certain way, that is your right. But that only applies to you. You do not have the right to force that practice on others, nor do you have the right to discriminate against people whose beliefs are different than yours. The goal of this society is to allow the maximum freedom of action and expression, limiting it only when it infringes on the right of others to do the same. It is a difficult balancing act.

Rule-Based Mentality and the Advancement of Science
As I noted earlier, the ability to distinguish "this" from "not-this" is central to the Western approach to scientific research. This would seem to play to the strength of rule-based thought. However, one of the tenets of scientific research is to allow an honest evaluation of unbiased data to lead you to your conclusions, wherever they may lead. And this flies in the face of the rule-based world. Rules are supposed to be immutable, and science is anything but immutable.

Scientific revolutions have always been opposed by those scientists who were bound by their adherence to old models of the world. Quite often, truly revolutionary new models of the world were not accepted until after the death of the discoverer. Many, in fact, led to the death of the discoverer, often at the hands of religious zealots who found the new concepts challenged their established rules.

These changes have been termed "Paradigm Shifts" because they profoundly change our mental models (paradigms), often having ramifications far beyond the expected scope. Concepts such as the fact that the Earth is round, not flat, or that the Earth is not the center of the universe, caused people to re-evaluate their position in existence. This, in turn, caused them to re-evaluate all the other rules which had been previously accepted as fact. And this is why rule-based leaders and their followers find such paradigm shifts so threatening. Not only do they feel anxiety over the sudden lack of rules, but it also challenges the authority and immutability of the rules which gave them their power.

During the last few centuries, and particularly the 20th Century, the body of scientific knowledge virtually exploded. More advancement was made in 200 years than in the previous 20,000. It has been noted that when George Washington travelled to his inauguration as our first President, he travelled at the same speed as did the Roman Emperors. Two hundred years later, we sent people to the moon and back. Considering that a majority of the population is rule-based, is it any wonder that we are experiencing a period of great consternation and turmoil? People whose comfort comes from immutable rules find these times incredibly threatening and will strike out at the messengers of change.

People who are choice-based, however, find these times incredibly exciting, although managing all that change certainly has it's own challenges. Thus we have people who rush to embrace change, and others who rush to hide from it or resist it.

Rule-Based Mentality and Democracy
Here we come to the crux of the matter. Can rule-based thinking actually support a representative form of government such as a democracy? Conversely, can choice-based thinking actually support a formal set of strict rules such as a governmental system? This is a bit of a paradox, in that a system of government is by definition a set of rules, and yet it must allow for flexibility and change. This flexibility has actually been the strength of our government. A government which is too rigid, like Communism, has very little chance of surviving in the long run. An inflexible system might be perfectly adapted to its environment at one particular point in time, but the world is not static. The best systems (governmental or otherwise) are those that have the ability to adapt to changing conditions. 

The vast majority of our ancestors came here to escape systems of government and society that had become (or always were) too rigid. Once you were born into an economic or social class, your destiny was largely determined. No amount of effort could change your position within the society. Such enforced stratification of society will always create pressure for change. Since the migration to the American colonies happened relatively quickly, followed shortly thereafter by our independence, such thoughts played a large role in the definition of our government.

In a democracy, all citizens have an equal voice (at least in theory). The direction of the government is an integration of the wishes of the people, with appropriate protections provided for the minorities to prevent abuses by the majority. This is a delicate balance to achieve, and can only be done by recognizing and tolerating points of view with which you may disagree. As we have seen, this isn't exactly a strength of rule-based people's thinking.

In the political realm, rule-based thinking is probably best exemplified by "strict constructionists," people who believe in the narrowest literal interpretation of the Constitution. They believe those are the rules, and they should never change. Personally, I find this position to be unrealistic and dangerous. The world is dynamic. We no longer believe it is fair that only white male landowners should be allowed to vote, for example, or that slavery should still be allowed, even implicitly as it was in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States .. according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.").

Some would make this even worse, by combining religion (Christianity in this case) with the basis of the government, ensuring a completely rule-based system. We need only look at European history to see how badly this has worked in the past, and we need only look at the Middle East to see how badly it works with other religions today. Freedom of religion can best be secured by keeping a clear separation between government legislation and religious doctrine.

This is not to say that laws should not be based on moral or ethical principles. Of course, they are. But they must represent true moral principles, not religious doctrine or practice, and they should be those principles on which the vast majority of us agree. It has been my experience that most people are good, ethical, kind and reasonable.

The "Liberal" community (i.e., Choice-based people) has been criticised by Conservatives and other Rule-based people for supposedly "coddling" criminals. They claim that Liberals are opposed to anything that would allow society to protect itself from criminals.

In reality, this "coddling" usually involves matters of individual rights based on our Constitutional assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty. It is interesting to note that Conservatives are critical of these rights until they themselves are accused of crimes, at which time they become positively Liberal in their demand for Constitutional protections. For example, Ed Meese, Ronald Reagan's first Attorney General, held that most anyone suspected of a crime was a criminal ("You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect." -- U.S. News and World Report, 10/14/85) - that is, until he became the subject of a Grand Jury investigation for bribery. Suddenly he became a stickler for the protections of the law. This is what happens when the boundary of one's Circle of Empathy is crossed.

The biggest distinction between Rule-based and Choice-based approaches with regard to the rule of law is that the Choice-based approach is an attempt to find balance in an environment that it recognizes as being dynamic and imprecise, while the Rule-based approach is to view the rules as immutable and to apply them strictly, in an attempt to force society into a preconceived and static mold.

What Really Motivates Rule-Based Attitudes?
I am coming to believe that rule-based attitudes arise as much from fear and insecurity as from anything. This may sound completely contradictory, considering the way in which rule-based thinking manifests itself: Firm, unyielding, and absolutely confident in it's own correctness. But it may only appear that way out of desperation.

As was noted in Don Ferruggia's "Contrasts In Style" article, the lack of rules is a terrifying concept for Rule-based people. Simply admitting that there are other sets of rules that may be valid carries with it the implicit admission that one's own set of rules might be wrong. And if your rules are wrong, that is the same as having no rules. It therefore becomes necessary to demand that all others follow the same rules. Only by eliminating diversity can a set of rules validate itself. Conformity is validation. "I must be doing the right thing, because everyone else is doing the same thing."

Thus we see religions attempting to convert all the "heathens" (i.e., people who believe another set of rules) to the "one true belief" or else kill them. In reality, religions can never be proven either right or wrong; they are, by their nature, matters of faith - which actually makes them antithetical to rule-based validation. It is your own faith that validates a religion in your own mind. You believe in it no matter what anyone else says or does. It is an immutable standard of behavior that does not depend on the conformity of others. Why, then, must conformity be enforced?

The examples of this are numerous and range from the extreme (religions, as noted) to the trivial: Why, in the 1960's, did people think that wearing one's hair long was such a great offense? In a historical perspective, it was actually short hair that was the anomaly, not long hair. And yet those of us who chose to wear our hair a certain style were discriminated against in numerous ways and even physically assaulted. Now, forty years later, long hair is once again acceptable. What purpose did it serve, what motivation was there, other than the attempted enforcement of conformity?

Endgame
Rule-based attitudes will never be able to justify themselves through enforced conformity, however. Even if some level of conformity is achieved/enforced/coerced,  new differences in behavior, beliefs, appearance, etc., will be noted that must then become the basis for more discrimination and enforced standards of behavior. The circle of empathy will continually shrink, and conformity will become more and more strict. Stability would only be achieved (theoretically) when everyone looks and acts exactly alike.

But human nature always desires freedom, and such levels of rigidity will inevitably generate increased opposition (just as it did in the old Soviet Union and other dictatorships). In the end, the system of conformity will either be forcibly overthrown or will simply be rejected by the mass of the people, creating a sudden discontinuity in the system. The only stable system is one that accepts and respects diversity of opinion, behavior and appearance within limits that are based on the interactions of the people.

Email me at "me@gordon-glasgow.org"