Of gracious professionalism and selfish needs

I’d like to offer a contrast of ideals and character for your consideration.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing several Medical Lake High School students, members of the Circuit Breakers robotics team. I went into the interview not knowing what to expect, having never spoken with a teenager involved with robotics. I guess I expected some serious nerdiness.

What a pleasant surprise it was. The kids I spoke with were polite, intelligent, engaging, enthusiastic and did their best to help me understand just how robotics competitions work.

I came away very impressed — not only about the broad range of skills it takes to have an internationally competitive team, but with their individual dedication to the shared effort they all exhibited.

Above all, however, these young people were serious and professional. They have to be, as robotics is not cheap nor easy — the annual effort requires significant fund raising and sales abilities in order to gain sponsors and supporters. To be competitive takes skill and ingenuity.

But what really stood out as I researched robotics competitions was the mandate of “gracious professionalism” where, to quote the Star Trek character Spock, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

An international contest whose goal is to inspire young people about “the rewards of science and technology,” the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics program encourages high–quality work that “emphasizes the values of others, and respects individuals and the community,” according to the competition’s website, where “fierce competition and mutual gain are not separate notions.”

Read that again: mutual gain.

This ideal is especially noteworthy in today’s increasingly polarized, self-involved world, enough so to share one more quote from the robotics website:

“Gracious professionals learn and compete like crazy, but treat one another with respect and kindness in the process,” the FIRST website states. “They avoid treating anyone like losers. No chest thumping tough talk, but no sticky-sweet platitudes either. Knowledge, competition, and empathy are comfortably blended.”

Those words remind me of a seemingly bygone era, when competitors would put aside their differences for the common good — mutual gain — be they companies or corporations helping a community rebuild after some catastrophe, or political leaders reaching across party divisions for the broader benefit of all Americans, not just individual investors or corporations concerned about maximizing profit or the bottom line.

Now contrast the idea of gracious professionalism to that which can only be described as the rising tide of incivility and falsehood in today’s world, where corporations see opportunity in disaster, and self-centered, chest-thumping, narcissistic attitudes have not only become the norm, but some twisted aspirational ideal to achieve on the path to “winning.” Outright falsehoods and blatant lies have become acceptable, and even desirable traits.

Part of that self-involved “winning” attitude is exhibited by the growth of personal wealth at an obscene scale by the greedy few. (A 2018 Oxfam International report noted that in 2017 fully 82 percent of global wealth was absorbed by 1 percent of the world’s population.) This was recently underscored when a multi-million dollar donation contest between mega-rich billionaires tried to one-up each other after the Notre Dame cathedral fire came to light. Donations have now exceeded the billion-dollar mark.

Far too many of our leaders in modern America and the world have forgotten how to be gracious professionals. They’ve forgotten that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of themselves. How much money does one family need? How much attention does one person require to feel good about themselves?

There are far too many Gordon Gekko’s willing to put themselves ahead of their customers and employees who are forced to buy their increasingly cheap products or services. There are far too many Donald Trumps putting their own pathological needs — or that of their corporate donor’s desires or political party’s rigid ideologies — above those who elect them with the expectation that they lead with their constituents best interests in mind.

Instead, the Gekko- Trump-types offer lies and “sticky-sweet platitudes” while lining their own pockets or massaging their fragile egos — or both— at the expense of the many.

We, both as Americans and global citizens, have a responsibility to hold CEOs, their corporations, and our elected officials accountable for their flagrant misuse of money and power. We have a responsibility to demand a return to gracious professionalism to counter the pathology of growth for the sake of profit, status and an inflated sense of self-importance.

Such ideals and attitudes are a social-industrial sickness that’s slowly killing the rest of us.

Competition can be a social good if it’s directed correctly and tempered with restraint and moderation, and, as FIRST requires of its graciously professional robotics competitors, it’s based on scientific principals, knowledge, empathy and compassion.

After all, it was the late American author and essayist Edward Abbey who noted that, “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.”

Lee Hughes can be reached at [email protected].