The Selfish Ideology

Your genes are selfish. They don't care about whether you're happy. They don't care whether you're successful. In fact, they don't care about anything.

They’re an unconscious force whose existence hinges on their ability to replicate. We, our bodies and our minds, are simply the tool by which genes get that job done. We are genetically programmed to propagate and protect our progeny, like it's so beautifully depicted in Deux meres.

Information also hinges on its ability to replicate. An excellent example is modern memes. They propagate quickly and similar to meiosis they fuse with other ideas in the popular landscape to create new breeds and organisms. However, there is something very different between a meme and a gene.

While most parents would sacrifice themselves for their own children, I doubt even the most profligate memer would sacrifice themselves for their meme.

Ideologies are genes in information form. They use the vessel of humans in order to propagate. And similar to genes, human beings will unknowingly sacrifice themselves so that their ideologies may prosper.

Ideologies came about because the information conveyed in them is like a coarse map. And we can use maps to help us navigate through the world. But the most important thing to understand about maps, is that a map is not the territory. If you were to navigate the Amazon rainforest by only looking at a map, your shoes would surely snag on some dislodged root, and you would tumble quickly back to the reality.

Maps become dangerous if we ignore the difference between reality and the map.

Before I started a business, I didn't think this was a problem. Generally speaking, when folks use a broken map, they fix it quickly enough. If you're trying to tell someone how to go from the East Coast to the West Coast, and you forget to mention the Mississippi River, it won't be long until people start complaining about your map. I only realized broken maps was a problem when I dealt with a powerful ideology like narcissism.

I had lived my entire life without ever working closely with a narcissist. So the first time I did, I had absolutely no antibodies. Most people I interact with are balanced, if not, a bit humble, when we talk about our achievements and challenges. Who wants to be a braggadocio? And so when I met a potential employee that constantly talked about how much they kicked ass and took names, I was awestruck. I immediately made them an offer and wanted them to join my team. How awesome would it be to work with such a rockstar? Well, I was about to find out.

We worked together for months, and I was constantly confused with how little we got done. Everything seemed to be moving slower and the company seemed to be at lower morale. Yet, this rockstar assured me that everything was great. When I look back, I sometimes wonder why I couldn’t see this earlier. The answer is pretty clear to me now, their belief (that they were perfect) had spread to everyone in the company. (The ideology was using us to spread and survive.) So when we were trying to fix the problem, we firmly believed that our rockstar was not to blame.

We tried everything else. We moved from agile development to shaping projects to PRDs. We tried changing the ownership structure. We tried OKRs and KPIs. We tried everything, everything but removing me. At that point, I seriously considered leaving the company and making the rockstar the CEO.

I was lucky. I had a wonderful group of supportive advisors to walk me back from the edge and help me examine my own beliefs from a new angle. With the benefit of fresh eyes looking at the problem, it became clear to me that I had ignored the difference between my map and reality - our rockstar was not perfect and was in fact the reason we were struggling.

We let go of our rockstar a few weeks later and the company immediately began to heal. Slowly we started to see reality for what it was and correct our distorted map.

Now, most of the time, when a map meets with a world that is fundamentally different, the holder quickly calibrates themselves. Because no matter how strong your beliefs, when a set of beliefs goes head-to-head with reality, reality always wins. But we were dealing with a very powerful ideology - narcissism - that used people to spread and protect itself to the detriment of the company and the rockstar.

People have asked me if I harbor any anger towards the rockstar. And that couldn’t be any farther from the truth. Narcissism used them just as much as it used the company or me. They couldn’t change or grow because if they did, they’d need to admit they were not perfect and go against their ideology. So, in this case, when narcissism hit reality, the ideology didn’t suffer, but instead, the people it had infected.

Now, not all ideology is bad. And every time a startup founder goes against the grain, it is their cognitive dissonance between their beliefs and reality, that keep them going.

But ideologies are selfish. So keep your wits about you, while the hapless adherent of an ideology is just a vessel for propagation, the savvy can use them for what they are intended to be - maps for navigating the world.