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calamity-bean · 5 years

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Hi !! In your post about "Mad Sweeney through the ages" you noted in the tags that you restrained yourself from going into tangents... I'm super interested about what you mentionned though ! Would you mind wiritng a little bit on the relationship between the Tuatha de and the fairies and the dead ?? Sorry, i'm very curious and I love history and mythology a lot !! (Also sorry for any mistakes, I'm not a native speaker !!) Thank you ! :)

Hello! Sorry it took me all day to answer this; it’s just that, well… this got a bit long, even though I tried to be brief. XD

Basically, what I was referring to is the same thing Sweeney talks about in the show: the way his identity has changed SIGNIFICANTLY over the centuries because the stories about him have mutated over time. People gradually conflated stories about certain types of beings (such as the Tuatha De Danann) with stories about other types of beings (such as fairies), or allowed elements of certain stories to influence others, and as a result, the very essence of what Sweeney IS evolved along with the folklore.

The cool thing, though — and I guess this is really the crux of what I was getting at in my tags — is that Sweeney’s particular evolutionary path isn’t a concept that’s unique to American Gods. I mean, to SOME extent, it’s AG’s invention; after all, the traditional figure of Mad Sweeney as portrayed in the Buile Suibhne is not a leprechaun or Lugh. He’s cursed, but he’s still just a mortal dude. But I think AG’s decision to MAKE him into those other things makes perfect sense in light of the fact that in certain areas that historically retained a strong Celtic influence (including much of the British Isles as well as Brittany), there really are a lot of intriguing similarities, overlaps, and parallels between the way folklore portrays fairies and the way it portrays the spirits of dead mortals. In Irish mythology specifically, the Tuatha De Danann get wrapped up in the relationship as well. These similarities have inspired a theory that elements of Celtic folklore about fairies might have evolved out of ancient superstitions about the dead and the places the dead were believed to inhabit. Which isn’t to say that it’s a direct evolution, nor that these three types of being are all exactly the same thing — simply that they seem to be related and to have influenced one another over time.

Unnecessarily detailed discussion under the cut, along with more of my thoughts on why I think this whole concept works out really well with regard to Mad Sweeney and lends a lot of weight to his backstory’s arc.

The People of the Mounds

One of the most familiar narratives in a classic fairy story is the human traveler who accidentally wanders into the fairy realm. It’s a story with innumerable variations. Perhaps the traveler simply follows the wrong path, or perhaps they enter a doorway in the side of a hill — either way, they end up in Faerie. It is a liminal space inhabited by beings that, because they are immortal or non-mortal, are not DEAD, exactly, but aren’t quite ALIVE, either, not in the way that mortal human beings are alive. And in many stories, it is also inhabited by dead humans. There are many versions of this story in which the traveler in Faerie is shocked to encounter a neighbor or loved one whom they know for a fact died years ago — like, actually physically DIED. And yet here their spirit is, trapped in this other world! The realm of Faerie is thus a place of great wonder, yes, but also great peril. It’s a place into which a person’s soul might be tragically stolen, though also a place from which they can sometimes be rescued. One such tale of rescue is the medieval poem Sir Orfeo, which is straight-up a Breton/English reimagining of Orpheus and Eurydice — except it’s set in Faerie instead of in the realm of the dead.

In short, Celtic stories often handle fairies and Faerie in a way that strongly evokes death, the realm of the dead, and the spirits of the dead. But for me, perhaps the most interesting aspect goes back to what I mentioned about WHERE these stories often take place. Where do the aos si dwell? Underground, of course — specifically, in hollow hills. It’s right there in the name: “aos si” means “people of the mounds.” Hence the stories in which a traveler enters Faerie through a door in the side of a hill. Coincidentally, where do the Tuatha de Danann dwell? Also underground — not originally, but they were driven underground by the Milesians, who took the above-ground world as their half of the earth in their truce.

But what kind of hill would be hollow? What kind of hill might have a doorway set into the side…?

Well… A hill like Newgrange, perhaps. Or like other hills within the Bru na Boinne complex. Or a hill like Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales, or Maes Howe in Orkney, or the Mound of the Hostages at Tara, or any number of other ancient barrows/tumuli: burial mounds built in prehistoric times as tombs for the human dead. Because the answer to “What other kind of creature dwells underground?” is, of course, dead people, at least in cultures which have tended to bury them.

Thus, the familiar trope of entering Faerie through a door in a hill very much evokes the idea of entering a tomb. This concept is reinforced by the fact that some specific fairy legends are anchored to specific tumuli. Newgrange is said to be the home of the Dagda and other Tuatha De; Cnoc Maedha is home to the fairy king Finvarra. Glastonbury Tor is associated with Gwyn ap Nudd of the Tylwyth Teg, ruler of the underworld of Annwn. Willy Howe is proposed to be the location of a specific version of one of those tales about a traveler wandering into a hill.

Not every fairy legend is associated with a specific hill, not every tumulus is associated with a fairy legend, and not every hill associated with a fairy legend has been confirmed to actually be a tomb. It’s more of a general association based on the tumulus shape. Also, some of these associations seem to have originated much later than others; they might be fairly recent inventions rather than old, traditional myths. But that’s kind of the point in AG, isn’t it: traditions evolve. Over time, they gather new associations and take on new meaning as the stories change. Did the idea that the aos si live in hollow hills evolve directly out of a superstition that specific hills — specific burial mounds — were home to the spirits of the dead? Perhaps! Perhaps not! Perhaps it’s more a case of stories mutually influencing each other, or maybe it’s convergent evolution, or maybe it’s sheer coincidence. But I think that the amount of similarity and overlap in these legends is enough to suggest roots in a common tradition, or at least to suggest that beliefs about these three categories of being have, over time, become intimately associated with each other.

Suibhne, the Dead King?

Which FINALLY brings us back to Sweeney.

I think the idea that the aos si evolved out of the Tuatha De Danann is pretty well known; I don’t think it’s entirely clear-cut from a historical standpoint, but it’s a theory I see mentioned quite often, and I feel like it intuitively makes sense. A transition from one supernatural, subterranean creature to another feels natural; it’s easy to grasp how those legends could be related. So it’s no surprise that American Gods would have a character who starts out as one of them and evolves into the other, especially since it’s been theorized that the concept of leprechauns in general might have evolved specifically out of Lugh. (The names share a possible etymology, and the characters share an association with luck.)

But the primary inspiration for Mad Sweeney — Suibhne, son of Colman Cuar, of the Buile Suibhne — feels, at first, like more of an outlier. Sure, Suibhne was under a curse, but he wasn’t, like, any type of supernatural creature… He was just a mortal human. The whole legend at least purports to be based on a real-life historical man. How does a mortal human get turned into a god or a fairy? How does that stage of Sweeney’s evolution fit in with leprechauns and Lugh?

To me, the key lies in the Annals of Tigernach. As I mentioned in my Mad Sweeney Through the Ages post, these annals record that Suibhne didn’t FLEE from the battle of Magh Rath… he DIED in it. And I don’t know whether AG is doing this on purpose, but in my opinion, this death really fits with the way AG has chosen to tell Suibhne’s story? In the Buile Suibhne, Suibhne flees the battlefield simply because the frenzy and St. Ronan’s curse overwhelm him. The idea that he fled because he foresaw his own death is AG’s own particular twist on the legend. AG’s Sweeney is a character who is haunted, throughout the different versions of himself, by near-deaths and foreseen-deaths and deaths that may or may not have actually happened. By choosing to reference the fact that Sweeney should have died at Magh Rath — possibly even did die at Magh Rath, heck, he supposedly died that night with the seer, too! — American Gods makes the critical decision to recast Suibhne mac Colmain as not merely the story of a king, but of a dead king.

And if you view the Buile Suibhne as the story of someone whose life, historically, ended at Magh Rath, but who through the power of mythology has been given an existence beyond Magh Rath, it becomes a story of undeath: of a mortal who becomes trapped in a strange, supernatural form of existence that is not exactly death but not really life as he knew it, either — sort of like a spirit trapped in Faerie. For me, AG’s decision to connect Suibhne’s legend with leprechauns and Lugh makes the most sense when I view Suibhne as a figure who kind of escaped death, but also kind of didn’t escape death, and always has this specter of death hanging over him for the rest of his cursed “life” after Magh Rath. If Suibhne is, essentially, a spirit persisting in a type of pseudo-life beyond death, then I can contextualize his role in Sweeney’s evolution within this whole theory of how the dead, the fae, and the Tuatha De Danann are intimately entwined.

Conclusion???

…WOW, this got long! Thanks for listening to me ramble. I hope it was interesting to you and that I’ve explained myself in a way that makes sense.

Obviously, I don’t know whether Gaiman / the showrunners of American Gods had any of these same concepts in mind when they were creating the book or the show. And I want to reiterate that the proposed relationship between these types of folklore is more of a theory than a concrete historical fact. It’s a theory that I find very compelling and very inspiring, but it’s difficult to really prove that traditional beliefs evolved in this way. Also, much of the actual scholarship I’ve found on this subject is older than I’d like, and I’m not sure whether different interpretations have since gained more traction in the field. Still, the work of Katharine Mary Briggs is a good place to start if you’re interested in reading more on this subject, especially her article “The Fairies and the Realms of the Dead.”

Regardless of whether it’s provable, though, I think it’s a theory that works beautifully with what we see in “Treasure of the Sun” and that fits really well with the mechanics of American Gods. And when it comes to AG, it doesn’t really matter, anyway, whether the dead and the fae and the gods were originally related or not — all that matters is that we humans believe that they are.

#mad sweeney #american gods #irish mythology #folklore #buile suibhne #ag meta #my meta #op #asks #Anonymous

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holocron-inthe-restrictedsection · 5 years

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The House of My Father

Written for @celebrate-the-clone-wars‘ Writing Wednesday prompt: Inheritance

Surprise, I’m writing again!

Words: 2433

Click ‘Keep Reading’ to stay on tumblr, or continue reading on AO3!

* * *

His homecoming had been chilly, to say the least.

There was no doubt in his mind that given the first opportunity, the dozens of nobles that controlled the planet would gladly dispose of him. They had stared daggers at him as he made his claim in the Great Assembly House, and made their objections clearly known. They did not find him worthy of the title; they saw him as an outsider, a usurper. He had to remind the gathered parliament that by their own laws, it was his right as eldest son to claim his House's title, resources, wealth, and power.

And Dooku intended to use his newfound status to its full potential.

The newly appointed Count had spent the last week familiarizing himself with the culture of his homeworld, and the legacy of House Dooku. It was a hefty history, but he committed it all to memory, to prove his loyalty to Serenno. Having lived all eight decades of his life in the Jedi Order, he had foreseen that the other Counts would view him as an individual unworthy of joining their ranks. Who was he, they hissed to one another, to march through their halls and demand the position he had surrendered upon his departure at the age of four?

But it had not fully been his choice, had it?

He remembered only snippets of the day the Jedi had come to the family manor to take him away. He remembered standing in the echoing antechamber ringed with sconces. He remembered the stiff hands of his father as he clasped Dooku on his shoulders and bid him farewell. His mother had cried, but he had no tears to shed for her. Dooku did not recall looking back at the manor as the Jedi's shuttle bore him away.

Standing before it now, Dooku viewed his new home critically. The oblong central structure that rose from the half-circle base of the building dwarfed the forest and security towers that surrounded it. It was compact and angular, its exterior largely unadorned. As far as architecture went, it lacked the elegance and aesthetic pleasantries of the other House manors he had observed.

But a sense of strength and power exuded from this place. Perched on the edge of a cliff-face, the imposing structure stared down from its lofty perch at the city of Saffia in the distance. Rather than mimicking the gentle curves of the open-air palaces that were popular with the other nobles, this place stood like a fortress. It was defensible and imposing, two great green-tinted stained-glass window staring like eyes; one gazing out the cliffside and one monitoring the approaching road. The security towers rose from the vast courtyard, ringing the manor like an honor guard.

“An impressive estate, Madam,” Dooku said graciously to the haughty woman standing beside him. “You have done well keeping up its splendor.”

“I'm so pleased you approve,” she replied icily. “Count.” She added the formality curtly as an afterthought.

Kostanza Dooku stood nearly as tall as Dooku himself, with all the bearing of a noblewoman used to commanding and being obeyed. Her chestnut-brown hair was beginning to grey, drawn back into a severe hairstyle that attempted to make her seem older than she was. She did not have their air of a cruel or callous person, but Dooku could sense the entitlement that coursed through her veins. She knew her place in the galaxy and took it in stride.

And now Dooku had come to take it from her.

Leaving the sleek speeder with the valet, his sister-in-law led him through the courtyard and into the manor itself, the skirt of her dress trailing behind her as she gave him a begrudging tour of the manor. Lavish furnishings filled the halls and rooms, priceless paintings and statues accumulated from hundreds of years of wealth and power. Servants – organic and mechanic – stood at attention as the two strode past them. Dooku reached out to the living servants, and found that for nearly every one of them, their loyalty was to Kostanza – not to the House. Making note of which human servants would need to be relieved and replaced, Dooku listened to the Regent closely, focusing on her presence in the Force and gleaning what information he could from her.

From his research after leaving the Jedi, Dooku had learned that his father, the late Hal Dooku, had remarried after the death of his first wife, and produced another heir nearly twenty years younger than his firstborn. Admittedly, Dooku took the news that he had a brother with little more than mild interest. The man that shared his father’s blood was dead, sent to an early grave by a stray blaster bolt while game hunting on Felucia. His wife Kostanza had served as Regent ten years since his death, as their son was still too young to take the mantle of Count. Adan Dooku had never met his father.

Kostanza had ruled well, it seemed. She was well-liked among the other Counts, and had maintained House Dooku’s vast influence politically and economically, securing their place as the wealthiest of all the Houses of Serenno.

And yet…

For all her clever dealings and appearances, she cared little of the power she wielded for her own sake; her feelings dwelt on her son.

Confident in her ability to maintain prestige herself, Dooku felt her energies devoted to Adan’s future. Her every action was calculated to instruct him in the ways of leadership, to prepare him for his eventual ascension to Count.

Now, each time the Regent looked to Dooku as they strolled through the manor, her eyes found the lightsaber hanging from his belt, and he felt her unease. All her plans had been skewed by his arrival, and she was mentally scrambling for a way to salvage them.

She had opposed him in the Great Assembly House, calling for her allies to support her authority as Regent, and her son’s eventual claim of the head of the House. She attempted to rebuff everything Dooku said, tried to paint him as an outsider, as a poisoner wearing a cape that did not belong to him. In spite of the heated debate that followed and the dark oaths of the other Counts, the Arbiters had begrudgingly denied Kostanza’s claim, and proclaimed Dooku the rightful heir and the patriarch of House Dooku. Adding insult to injury, they then instructed Kostanza to familiarize Dooku with his new obligations, and show him to his new estate.

Dooku had not intended to embarrass the woman, or to undermine her authority. But he did not care that he had. She was irrelevant to him. With the backing of the Arbiters, and with no physical force to challenge him, there was little she could do to threaten him. And so, with color high in her cheeks and eyes glinting with rage, she had obeyed.

Kostanza fell silent as they entered the throne room. Dooku paced away from her, examining the vast space. The massive green stained-glass window commanded the empty, echoing room’s attention. An incredibly high-backed black chair sat behind a dark angular sweeping desk upon a raised dais at the far end of the room. An unusual choice, to have a desk before the throne, but it spoke of the prerogative of House Dooku; business, economy, prestige, and a separation from those who fell beneath his rule.

Dooku turned back to face the Regent. “I will of course require access to all records. Passcodes, clearance, and other pertinent information may be transmitted directly to my datacron.” His measured voice carried impressively in the throne room.

A muscle in her neck jumped. “Of course. Count.” She gestured carelessly to a droid that had trailed them since the foyer. The astromech chirped once in acknowledgement, rolling towards Dooku’s outstretched hand, taking the datacron in its forceps and beginning the downloading process.

“I can’t help but wonder,” Kostanza said at length, watching him closely. “What brought you back to Serenno? The quickest of searches revealed that you are a distinguished Jedi Master. Why leave your noble service after all these years?”

The patronizing tone confirmed that she did not think much of the Jedi. Not that Dooku could blame her, now. While he wasn’t about to reveal all of his reasons for claiming his title, it was only proper to give a passable response.

“I realized my views have diverted too much from what the Jedi Order deems passable. I could no longer abide by their ways. I can do more for the galaxy – and for my people – as Count of House Dooku than I can as a Jedi.”

She eyed him skeptically, but said nothing further.

The droid finished the download and extended the cube once more. Dooku slipped it into his robes.

“I trust all records are accurate and up-to-date?”

Her chin lifted fractionally. “Of course. You will find my data complete and incredibly detailed. I let nothing go unnoted.”

“You do yourself and hour House a great honor through your meticulousness.”

“Indeed,” she sniffed. “If you wish to begin looking through matters of state, I shall leave you in peace.”

In all likelihood, Dooku considered, she simply did not wish to be present when he sat upon her throne. Childish, but understandable.

“Yes. I imagine there are many issues that require my attention.”

With deliberate strides, she began making her way across the gangway towards the master bedroom. Dooku watched for a moment, considering his next words carefully.

He clasped his hands behind him. “A moment, Kostanza.”

Dooku felt her bristle at the familiarity of using her first name, but she turned to regard him silently.

“I intend to assume all aspects and duties required of the Countship as immediately as possible, and to their fullest extent. I cannot help but feel that your presence here will hinder that goal.

She went very still. Dooku felt a swell of panic in her, her eyes boring into him, though she remained composed. He felt her mind whirling, searching for a way to undermine him, to eradicate his misgivings, as though she could somehow influence his already-made decision.

“I assure you, Count, I will uphold the ruling of the Arbiters. It would be most beneficial for me to remain here. I am intimately familiar with the proceedings and alliances of the House. I am an invaluable asset as you get your bearings.”

In another life, Dooku thought, they could have been allies. Kostanza was clever and determined, with a talent for politics and business that would have been useful to him. But her devotions were too focused on her son; she cared only for his wellbeing, for his eventual ascension. Her emotions clouded her thoughts, made her too single-minded. Despite her current oath of fealty, she would always be on watch for ways to undermine him, to clear the path for her son. She would never forgive Dooku for interrupting her way of life. And years of experience made Dooku certain that grudge would only fester like an infection. In the conflict that had already been set into motion, she would merely get in his way.

Better to cut away the infection before it could spread.

He gazed at her coolly, and she seemed to realize her reasoned argument held no sway. For a moment, he thought she’d try to appeal to his emotions, to attempt to make him feel sorry for the last of his family. Perhaps she would insist that he meet his nephew. But she said nothing further. Perhaps she realized it would be futile.

“While I appreciate your position, my dear, I am afraid your services will not be required here further. I will arrange for immediate transportation for you and young Adan to a more suitable clime. Alderaan is always open to resettling dignitaries –”

“You would send us off-world?” Kostanza hissed, taking an involuntary step forward.

“It is in your best interest.”

She seemed to be wrestling with a thought. Finally, she said softly, “Adan will be Count. With no heir of your own, he is next in line. When you pass on, House Dooku will be his to command. By sending us away, you merely separate him from his people and delay his education.”

Dooku looked at her impassively. “I suggest you and your son gather your belongings by this evening. I shall have a shuttle awaiting you at the foyer. Thank you, Madam. You are dismissed.”

Her eyes narrowed. Drawing herself to her full height, Kostanza pierced him with a stare. “You will pay for this insolence.” She swept from the room with her remaining dignity. As she snapped fingers in one last show of defiance, the human servants trotted out after her, leaving Dooku alone in the throne room, save for a single droid standing unmoving at the throne.

No, my dear. I will profit.

Dooku ascended the dais with measured steps, feeling a strange sense of pride rising in him as he rounded the desk and stood directly before the throne. He considered it carefully, once more mentally preparing himself for this next step.

He glanced at the droid standing beside him, an old version of a protocol droid. It looked back at him with dim yellow photoreceptors.

“Has she trapped the chair in any way?” Dooku asked the droid, only half-joking.

“That would be against the wishes of the Arbiters,” the droid replied in a monotone.

“And whom do you serve?”

“I serve House Dooku.”

Nodding to himself, Dooku lowered himself onto the throne. He gazed at the empty hall, and the sudden thought came to him that his father sat here, and his father before him, and his father before him. A long line of strong rulers that had built their House to be the most powerful in all of Serenno. And now their contributions would be put to use in the most significant event in the modern age.

He had intended to return to Serenno after leaving the Order, yes, but he hadn’t fully decided whether to claim his full inheritance. But when he went to meet with Chancellor Palpatine after officially separating from the Jedi… his plans for the future had changed drastically.

Dooku closed his eyes and centered himself. He had more purpose now than he’d ever had before – a clear goal, and the means to fulfill it.

He accessed the datacron, and numerous files flickered to life on the projected viewscreen before him. With the entirety of House Dooku’s resources at his disposal, he set to work.

There was much to be done.

#I didn't realize it had been 2 months since i wrote anything #I've been so focused on drawing i've neglected writing #gotta figrue out how to strike a balance between the two #still glad i was able to write this #I've always wondered how dooku's homecoming went #I figured he had to have family still alive in order to actually have wealth and power to inherit #since if the family died out i think it would have been absorbed by one of the other Houses #and I happened to be on wookipedia looking up serenno culture and came across kostanza and adan #I guess adan's son bron is the subject of a comic set during the empire #I kinda fudged the timeline cuz i've got no idea how old adan was supposed to be or how long kostanza was regent #but it makes sense in my head so i'm going with it #sw #star wars #count dooku #dooku #kostanza dooku #hal dooku #adan dooku #@celebrate-the-clone-wars #writing wednesday #renee's fanfic #renee's writing #serenno #house dooku #inheritance

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xhostcom · 5 years

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Social Media Trends

Social media has had a turbulent year to say the least. Many social giants, Facebook in particular, has been criticized for issues ranging from data privacy to manipulative content. This year, Facebook users learned that the social network had compromised their privacy by allowing access to the personal information of millions of people to a political analytics firm. The data privacy issue put into sharp focus the magnitude of power these companies have over user data. Many people for the first time acknowledged the extent at which bad actors can exploit and disrupt government elections, broadcast viral propaganda and spread messages of hate across the globe. As the scandals mounted, both the public and the government were left questioning just how much power social networks (should) have and how much responsibility we all have to each other. Despite this backlash, social media continues to be a pervasive part of most Americans’ lives. According to a recent report, social media and messaging apps accounts for roughly 1 in every 3 minutes people spend on the internet and Facebook remains the primary platform for most Americans. Approximately two-thirds of U.S. adults (68%) report that they are Facebook users, and nearly three-quarters (75%) of those users access Facebook on a daily basis. Among younger generations, video and photo sharing sites are even more popular as an astounding 94 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds regularly use YouTube. The negative aspects of social media are hard to ignore, but on the flipside, what about the positive impact of social? Social media networks give users an opportunity to connect with others personally and professionally across the globe, catalogue and share life’s important moments, mobilize and fundraise for important causes and simply be entertained. Businesses have an opportunity to engage and service their customers more efficiently in an increasingly connected and digital world. So, what does 2019 hold for social media? How will user behaviour change in light of these issues and opportunities? Here are my social media predictions for 2019: 2019: The Rise of Dark Social for Consumers and Brands

Dark social, despite sounding ominous, means sharing content that occurs outside of what can be measured by traditional web analytics. It can also mean an online community where identity takes a backseat to free, anonymous content sharing. In this political and social climate, I predict an emergence of dark social in terms of how people share content and how brands look to monetize what content is shared in private spaces. People still want to be social online, but they don’t necessarily want these interactions to occur under the gaze of the entire world. Social networks have become a place for people to share carefully crafted snippets of their life with friends, family and strangers who view their public profiles. The historical record that many social networks leave behind has led to widespread self-censorship. People are reluctant to post content for fear that it will be dredged up months or even years later. In my view, the context gap is one of the driving forces behind the emergence of dark social. The context gap is where identity and permanence take a backseat to content. In their daily lives, people often interact with different groups. The things you might talk about with your family around the dinner table are often a far cry from the conversations you have with friends during a pub crawl. Context collapse is what happens when these different groups collide in one place — usually weddings or social media. If you share something online, everyone you know is able to see it. This often leads to a chilling effect where people find there isn’t much they want to share with everyone. Dark social just may be the answer. Dark social accomplishes two goals for users: addresses a desire to project a particular image and gives people an opportunity to avoid damaging material in a social sharing economy that is anything but open and transparent. One of the ways people avoid leaving behind a trail of (potentially) embarrassing uploads is by favoring networks with disappearing content like Snapchat and Instagram stories. The disappearing nature of Snapchat’s content is especially appealing to younger generations, with 78 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds using the platform. On the app, people can share content they find funny, interesting or important without having it associated with them forever. For brands, marketing on traditional platforms like Facebook, while highly effective at scale, requires brands to flatten people into pre-established buckets. Dark-social spaces, on the other hand, function more as focus groups. They provide an honest, inside view into what tastemakers and potential customers are thinking and sharing. Dark social is about understanding overall traffic and consumer sentiment. From there, brands can get a bit more granular by applying basic demographic information to these platforms. Knowing this information can help marketers make better sense of the trends and conversations they observe in these spaces. Combine that insight with a smart understanding of what different groups that have gathered tend to discuss, and there’s a new entry point for understanding how to market products and services. Visual Communications Continues and Evolves From text posts to infographics, from pictures to the explosion of online video, and back to short, digestible content like gifs and memes, I predict that the visual culture on social media will continue to shape shift. Our ability to communicate through visual language and the creativity we experiment with in this medium will continue to evolve. The next iteration to go mainstream could be AI-driven gifs or once 5G comes into play, the ability to post high definition selfies or stream 4K live video on social. Whatever form this communication takes, it will be designed to interact with audiences at increasingly quick speeds. Social Media and the Generational Divide

In 2019, it is estimated that there will be around 2.77 billion social network users around the globe, up from 2.46 billion in 2017. That 2.77 billion users is now made up of four generations: Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z. All four cohorts have different user behavior, social channel preferences and varying tech experience. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snap are all important social experiences offering unique ways for connecting people. Facebook will continue to dominate by sheer number of users, but I predict that people will fragment even further and organize by age group. Younger people in the Gen Z group in particular will engage, not only where their peers are, but on the channels that offer authentic, new ways to express themselves and connect with others online. Rise of Stress Free Social With so much of traditional social media tied to identity and personal branding, a “comparison” culture has emerged where people feel the need to measure their lives against what other people are posting. Compounded by the social media drama of 2018, people are welcoming “stress free social” where authenticity and content is entertaining, interesting and real. Posting authentic content anonymously where its free from judgment or trolling will rise in popularity. As users attention spans continue to shrink, I predict disappearing content like Instagram Stories and Snapchat to sharply increase in popularity. The events of were dizzying 2018 when it came to social media, but 2019 marks an interesting turning point. We’ll continue to create new social media sharing experiences and probably pay closer attention about how our data is used and take greater responsibility for the content we share. As we continue into 2019, “getting back to basics” is the best way to characterize this year. Read the full article

#socialmedia

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dimenzion3 · 5 years

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How to Build a Diverse and Powerful Culture

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At Fortay.ai, a prescient culture investigation stage, there are no standards. In any case, 40% of its architects are ladies a striking record for the tech business. The association centers around qualities and convictions while enlisting individuals. By contracting the correct ability, decent variety has turned into a characteristic result.

"What you need to keep away from are identity (or psychometric) evaluations, which can concentrate a lot on the 'who side of the condition' and can be homogenizing. Chief, and Co-author of Fortay. "Rather you need to concentrate on the qualities and convictions arrangement with regards to a work environment culture that is comprehensive."

Building a culture of Diversity and Inclusion consulting variety requires more than well meaning plans or inspirational discourses.

1. Build a Culture of Acceptance:

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Give individuals a chance to pose inquiries as long as they do it deferentially, don't blue pencil real to life input. Everybody learns by tuning in to the individuals who pose inquiries that most have as a main priority Atlassian rehearses the "No interference rule." Minorities feel scared or awkward sharing they are ordinarily intruded. This training enables everybody to ring in.

4. Integrate rather than create a bigger divide:

"Abstain from making the 'them' versus 'us' approach. There's a hazard that numerous individuals could feel deserted when 'minorities' are the new favored. Assorted variety is about the aggregate all things considered, not around one section specifically. Abstain from making it around one section: it could blowback. Concentrate on social equalization.

And the other hand The Talent consulting firms Practice works with you in ensuring you get best value for your investment on talent. Our consultants with expertise in different aspects of an employee lifecycle ensure you don’t have to go anywhere else to handle your challenges or leverage opportunities.

5. Don’t let metrics overshadow belonging:

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There's a recognition that pushing unreasonably hard for decent variety can hurt the association. Abstain from procuring for portrayal corporate enrollment specialists are currently one-sided to hold onto decent variety as this article clarifies. Defining objectives is significant, however the 'why' matters the most. What kind of culture would you like to advance?

Individuals don't simply need to feel invited; they should be a piece of the greater entirety. They have to encourage the authoritative culture just as feed off the way of life as well. Having a place goes past resistance and acceptance people should don't hesitate to convey their actual self to the gathering.

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ofubox · 5 years

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Back in May, at Google’s I/O Developer Conference, the company demonstrated its new Duplex system, an AI-powered virtual assistant that makes phone calls to organize your schedule for you. The audience watched a recording of Duplex making bookings at a restaurant and hair salon. They laughed in surprise when it ‘mmm-hmmm’d its way through the conversation, apparently convincing the person on the other end of the phone that they were, in fact, talking to a fellow human being. This unexpectedly convincing demonstration set social media buzzing – and in the process, it raised a question. Does Duplex’s capabilities for reading and sending conversational signals show that a machine is capable of empathy? This is one of the most critical questions in the developing debate around AI, its role in society, and the extent to which it will disrupt creative industries such marketing. Can a machine have empathy? The three responses I wanted to get a sense of the different opinions out there – and so I decided to ask the question in my LinkedIn feed: Can a machine have empathy? It was the start of a fascinating discussion stream with some intriguing responses. Broadly speaking, these answers fell into three categories. I think these are a pretty good representation of the views that professionals have of AI’s capabilities – and their views about how those capabilities could be used. The first type of response is that yes it can, or yes it will, because AI is ultimately capable of anything the human brain is capable of. As one of the commenters on my question put it, Empathy can be programmed like us. We are machines… the brain is a very good computer but still any ordinary analogically programmed Quantum computer.” The second response is that no, it can’t, because empathy is a uniquely human characteristic and not something a machine is capable of experiencing: Empathy entails not only a sense of self, but also experiencing the emotions of someone else (more or less)—to feel another’s pain… We do not understand consciousness in humans, let alone possess the ability to create it—with verification—artificially.” The third type of response is particularly intriguing. It’s a question of its own: if a machine appears to have empathy, does it really matter if that empathy is real or not? It amounts to functionally the same thing, whether that machine is feeling the same emotions as us or merely deducing those emotions from the signals we send, and coming up with the most appropriate response: “let's imagine we can't tell the difference if it is genuine or not, because a robot has learned the mimic and structure of empathic behaviour, are we still able to look at the robot as a machine?” I’m writing this post to share my own view, but also to answer the question raised in the third type of response that I received. Does the distinction between real and ‘artificial empathy’ matter? I believe that it does. Especially in marketing.Why machines are incapable of true empathy First though, let’s go back to the original question: can a machine have empathy? I’ll put my cards on the table here. I don’t think this is a matter of opinion – and I don’t think it’s one of those questions where the answer may change in the future. A machine cannot have empathy by definition. It comes down to what empathy is – and what a machine is. The full definition of empathy in the Oxford English Dictionary is this: “the power of mentally identifying oneself with (and so fully comprehending) a person or object of contemplation.” Machines cannot mentally identify themselves with human beings because what goes on in the mind of a human being involves things that a machine can never experience for itself, no matter how advanced and deep-learning-driven its own processes might be. For the same reason, a machine will never fully comprehend a human being. As we discuss the role of AI in society in general, and in marketing in particular, it’s important to be clear about why this is. Feeling machines that think The neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio describes it like this: we are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think. Human consciousness involves a lot, lot more than rational cognition. In fact, that ability for rational thought is a byproduct of most of the other aspects of our consciousness – not our brain’s driving force. Our conscious life is driven by the way that we experience the world through our senses: a combination of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell that no machine will ever experience in the same way. It’s also driven by powerful biological impulses and needs. No machine will ever feel what it means to be hungry or thirsty; no machine is moved and motivated by the drive to have sex and all the attendant emotions that spin around it; no machine fears homelessness or feels the intense vulnerability that comes from fear for your physical safety. Finally, and no less significantly, our consciousness is shaped by the collective intelligence and cultural memory that comes from being part of the human race. We have collectively channelled our shared emotions and sensory experiences into stories, conversations, shared jokes, sarcasm, symbolism and incredibly subtle psychological signals for many thousands of years. That same collective intelligence develops ethics and values that we can all instinctively agree with; it makes sense of money and systems of fair trade; it agrees on concepts that aren’t logically concrete but are perfectly solid in our minds. Nothing else communicates like human beings – and human beings communicate with nothing else the way they do with one another. This is significant, because the only way to acquire a share in our collective intelligence is to be interacted with as a human being yourself. Unless we engage with machines in the same, full way that we do with other human beings, this collective experience and intelligence is simply not available to them. They are not part of the empathy club. Artificial Intelligence doesn’t replicate human intelligence When people talk about the human brain operating like a computer or about AI learning in the same way that a human being does, they are guessing. In fact, they are part of a long tradition of guessing at how the brain works – and what really makes our consciousness tick. Whenever we invent a new technology, there’s a powerful temptation to start using that technology as an analogy for how the brain functions. When we invented electricity, we started talking about electric currents in the brain; when we invented the telegram, we decided it worked by sending signals. Every time you talk about the cogs whirring away trying to figure something out, you’re harking back to the era when we invented clockwork and became convinced that something similar was going on inside our heads. The conviction many people now have that the human brain works like a computer (and is therefore primarily a logic machine) is just our latest guess. We really don’t know how the brain works and how that working produces our consciousness. It’s therefore highly unlikely that we replicated the human brain when we invented computers – or developed AI. These are the reasons why I agree passionately with the second of the responses to my question in the LinkedIn feed. When we claim that a machine can feel empathy, we’re guilty of reducing the immense, mysterious workings of the human brain and human consciousness down to something that can be understood, replicated and mimicked through a machine driven by logic. It’s not so much that we’re overestimating the capabilities of AI – it’s that we’re severely underestimating how complex our own capabilities are. What’s the difference between Artificial Empathy and the real thing? That brings me to the second question – does it matter that Artificial Empathy isn’t true empathy if it still interacts with us in the same way? I believe it matters a lot. If we proceed with AI on the basis that it doesn’t, the implications will be huge. Artificial Empathy works by observing, learning, responding to and replicating the signals that people send. As deep-learning AIs evolve, and as they are able to work on larger and larger data sets, they’ll get better and better at doing this – of producing the appearance of empathy. However, true empathy involves a lot more than merely observing and responding to emotional signals, no matter how many of those signals you have to work with. Why? Because the signals that people send are a tiny fraction of the internal narrative that they experience. You and I are both far more than the sum of what other people think we are by watching what we do and say. We contain capabilities, emotions, memories and experiences that influence our behaviour without ever coming to the surface. They have to be intuited without ever actually being observed. Beyond rationality: what human empathy is capable of Human intelligence is so powerful because it is not limited to rational thinking. The other elements of our consciousness enable us to deal with the inherent unpredictability and ambiguity of the world around us. They enable us to make decisions on the basis of shared values and motivations that resonate collectively and enable us to know what is right without having to figure out what is right. Empathetic human intelligence is able to feel what it feels to be sad, and feel what it feels to be happy – and it allows those feelings to sway its judgments and its behaviour towards others. A machine couldn’t do that, even if it wanted to. Things become complicated when machines start taking decisions that have profound consequences, without the emotional context and shared values that all humans use when making such decisions. This was one of the key themes in the piece that Henry Kissinger recently wrote on the implications of AI, for The Atlantic. Take the self-driving car that must decide between killing a parent or a child. Will such a machine ever be able to explain to human beings why it makes the choice that it does? And if it’s not required to explain actions with human consequences in human terms, what becomes of our system of ethics and justice? It will need to be rewritten, simplified and stripped of emotion in order to accommodate such machines. As a result, it will feel less representative of us as human beings. Beware a Narrow AI definition of marketing A similar process would occur if we substituted artificial empathy for human empathy when it comes to marketing. AI can impersonate human interactions, but with a far narrower understanding of what’s going on than a human being would have. We have to bear this in mind when we choose the role that AI should play in engaging with audiences or directing marketing strategies. Google’s Duplex may have the appearance of empathy, but that empathy is strictly limited to what’s relevant to the task at hand: completing a restaurant booking, for example. It’s not trained to detect any emotion outside of this – or readjust its behaviour on that basis. If the person on the other end of the phone sounded disorganised and stressed could Duplex respond? Could it make them feel better? Could it thereby charm them into somehow finding a slot for them at a busy time? And from the restaurant’s point of view, will the person making the booking be as likely to actually turn up – or will they feel less obligation to do so, since they never actually spoke to the restaurant themselves? There’s a lot more to human conversation than exchanging information efficiently – and that’s where the implications of real and artificial empathy start to become particularly significant. It’s not just one-to-one conversations that are affected by the difference between real and artificial empathy. It’s also the conversations that you hold with the market and your audience in general. Marketing is the process of creating a proposition that has value for people, and which they will exchange value for. Up to now, marketers and their audiences have been able to feel that value in broad and varied terms that reflects what it means to be alive. Brands and their products and solutions provide functions and services but also reassurance, confidence and certainty; a sense of support and potentially even belonging. And don’t think I’m just talking about consumer brands here. B2B marketing addresses some of the most powerful motivations and emotions that a human being can feel: around security, hopes for the future, the ability to provide for others, personal value and worth. If we start to hand fundamental strategic decisions about marketing to AI, then the definition of value will narrow with startling speed. It will be based around what can easily be observed, measured and communicated – the kinds of things that machines can feel artificial empathy for. It will offer efficient optimisation of particular aspects of a marketing proposition – but the risk is that it ignores the other elements that engage human consciousness in different ways. Smart B2B marketers know the dangers of talking about price when their buyers really want reassurance on value. They know the importance of instilling confidence over and above simply describing product features. Perhaps most importantly, they know that what a buyer describes as being the basis for their decision is often not the only basis for their decision. It’s not just what’s observable that matters. Does AI make better judgments – or just more efficient ones? Much of the fear that people express about AI involves being replaced by a superior form of intelligence that can think in ways that we can’t conceive of and outcompete us in almost every role we can imagine. I believe that the real danger is subtly different: that we downgrade our own intelligence and unique capacity for empathy because a far narrower artificial version is capable of doing some things in a more efficient way. Unless they are fully aware of these risks, organisations that plan on unlocking vast new forms of competitive advantage through AI could end up narrowing the scope of what they are capable of instead. I work for LinkedIn, which is itself owned by Microsoft: two businesses that are developing exciting applications of AI but which also spend a lot of time thinking about how that technology can be ethically used, and what impact it has on society. Microsoft thought leaders talk about building self-limiting considerations into AI systems, for example, describing AIs that know “when they need to get out of the way.” That’s hugely important at all levels of marketing and business. There are exciting times ahead for applying AI in marketing, including applications that can detect emotional signals at scale and provide us with new depths of audience understanding. As marketers, AI tools can make us more responsive to our audiences on an emotional level – but only if we see them as an input for human empathy rather than a substitute for it. The secret to making best use of artificial empathy will be recognising its limitations compared to the real thing. Effective leadership in an age of AI involves recognising that a world of sensory, emotive, complex and conscious beings cannot be navigated by logic and observation alone.

http://ofubox.blogspot.com/2019/09/can-machine-have-empathy.html

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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‘Someone’s Gotta Tell the Freakin’ Truth’: Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/someones-gotta-tell-the-freakin-truth-jerry-falwells-aides-break-their-silence/

‘Someone’s Gotta Tell the Freakin’ Truth’: Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence

At Liberty University, all anyone can talk about is Jerry Falwell Jr. Just not in public.

“When he does stupid stuff, people will mention it to others they consider confidants and not keep ittotallysecret,” a trusted adviser to Falwell, the school’s president and chancellor, told me. “But they won’t rat him out.”

Story Continued Below

That’s beginning to change.

Over the past year, Falwell, a prominent evangelical leader and supporter of President Donald Trump, has come under increasing scrutiny. News outlets have reported on business deals by Liberty University benefiting Falwell’s friends. Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen claimed that he had helped Falwell clean up racy “personal” photographs.

Based on scores of new interviews and documents obtained for this article, concerns about Falwell’s behavior go well beyond that—and it’s causing longtime, loyal Liberty University officials to rapidly lose faith in him.

More than two dozen current and former high-ranking Liberty University officials and close associates of Falwell spoke to me or provided documents for this article, opening up—for the first time at an institution so intimately associated with the Falwell family—about what they’ve experienced and why they don’t think he’s the right man to lead Liberty University or serve as a figurehead in the Christian conservative movement.

In interviews over the past eight months, they depicted how Falwell and his wife, Becki, consolidated power at Liberty University and how Falwell presides over a culture of self-dealing, directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains. Among the previously unreported revelations are Falwell’s decision to hire his son Trey’s company to manage a shopping center owned by the university, Falwell’s advocacy forloans given by the university to his friends, and Falwell’s awarding university contracts to businesses owned by his friends.

“We’re not a school; we’re a real estate hedge fund,” said a senior university official with inside knowledge of Liberty’s finances. “We’re not educating; we’re buying real estate every year and taking students’ money to do it.”

Liberty employees detailed other instances of Falwell’s behavior that they see as falling short of the standard of conduct they expect from conservative Christian leaders, from partying at nightclubs, to graphically discussing his sex life with employees, to electioneering that makes uneasy even those who fondly remember the heyday of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., the school’s founder and Falwell Jr.’s father, and his Moral Majority.

In January, theWall Street Journalreported that in the run-up to Trump’s presidential campaign, Cohen hired John Gauger, a Liberty University employee who runs a private consulting firm, to manipulate online polls in Trump’s favor. Not previously reported is the fact that, according to a half-dozen high-level Liberty University sources, when Gauger traveled to New York to collect payment from Cohen, he was joined by Trey Falwell, a vice president at Liberty. During that trip,Trey posted a now-deleted photo to Instagram of around $12,000 in cash spread on a hotel bed, raising questions about his knowledge of Gauger’s poll-rigging work. Trey did not respond to requests for comment.

Jerry Falwell Jr. responded to more than two dozen written questions, defending his actions and criticizing the reporting of this article. “I fear that the true information I am sharing in good faith will simply not make any difference. And will only result in more questions,” Falwell said. He declined to answer subsequent questions.

The string of news articles over the past several months has had a minimal effect on Falwell’s leadership of Liberty University. As the namesake of the school’s founder, Falwell has never had his position seriously challenged. Liberty is thriving financially. Its enrollment has surged past 110,000 students—the vast majority of whom are enrolled online—and across its campus in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, the hum of backhoes and bulldozers is omnipresent as construction crews work to keep pace with the university’s swelling ambitions.

But these new revelations speak to rising discontent with Falwell’s stewardship. The people interviewed for this article include members of Liberty’s board of trustees, senior university officials, and rank-and-file staff members who work closely with Falwell. They are reluctant to speak out—there’s no organized, open dissent to Falwell on campus—but they said they see it as necessary to save Liberty University and the values it once stood for. They said they believe in the Christian tradition and in the conservative politics at the heart of Liberty’s mission. Many knew Jerry Falwell Sr. and remember him with clear affection. “The day that man died was the day I lost a father,” one current university official said. All count themselves as conservatives. Many are strong supporters of Trump.

I am a graduate of Liberty University, and my time there overlapped the tenures of both Falwell Sr. and his son. Over the course of my years of reporting on the university, the Falwells have granted me considerable access, including sit-down interviews in the offices of both Falwell Jr. and his brother, the Rev. Jonathan Falwell, who leads Thomas Road Baptist Church. I’ve written candidly about my time there as a student, reported about political divisions on campus and revealed that Trey co-owns a gay-friendly hostel in Miami.

Members of the Liberty University community are generally reluctant to go on the record. The school uses nondisclosure agreements to prohibit many university employees or board members from openly discussing what they’ve seen Falwell do. (“All trustees sign a confidentiality agreement that does not expire at the close of Board service,” Liberty’s attorney told board members in an email that was sent earlier this month after the school received inquiries from reporters on some of the issues outlined in this article.) Tenure and its protections are not available to Liberty faculty members outside the law school. If you teach or work at Liberty, you must get approval from Falwell’s office before you speak to the media. Talk to reporters without his approval—or publicly criticize him, even obliquely—and you could lose your job. If you’re a board member and do the same, you could get forced out, even if you have unimpeachable credentials in the Christian conservative movement.

“It’s a dictatorship,” one current high-level employee of the school said. “Nobody craps at the university without Jerry’s approval.”

“Everybody is scared for their life. Everybody walks around in fear,” said a current university employee who agreed to speak for this article only after purchasing a burner phone, fearing that Falwell was monitoring their communications. The fear is not limited to Liberty’s campus. Several people who lack any tie to Liberty but live in the school’s hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia, refused to go on the record for this story, fearing Falwell would take revenge upon them and their families. “Fear is probably his most powerful weapon,” a former senior university official said.

But even those who fear have their breaking points.

In speaking out, said one longtime current university employee with close ties to theschool’s first family, “I feel like I’m betraying them in some way. But someone’s gotta tell the freakin’ truth.”

“We’re talking about the difference between right and wrong,” a current high-ranking university official said. “Not even ‘being a Christian,’ but being a good person, versus people who manipulate the system”

PART I: The Kingdom

Long before his May 2007 death, the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr.—the Baptist preacher who founded Liberty University and whose creation of the Moral Majority marked the emergence of white evangelical conservatives as a national political force—made clear how he wanted the empire he’d built to be divided when the time came.

His two sons, Jerry Jr. and Jonathan, had each inherited different aspects of their father’s persona. For Jerry Jr., the elder of the two by four years, it was the stomach for partisan politics, ability to throw an elbow and the savvy to court influential friends. For Jonathan, it was the calling to ministry, his easy way with people and charisma as a public speaker. Jerry Jr. would preside over Liberty University, and Jonathan would lead Thomas Road Baptist Church. Each son had worked under their father at the respective institutions; each knew well what those positions would require.

A bigger question remained: Who would step into Falwell Sr.’s unique role as a national figurehead at the crossroads of evangelical Christianity and conservative politics—a man who counted presidents and senators as friends, a public figure whose outspoken statements riled critics and endeared him to conservatives, and whose endorsement carried real weight with a certain segment of voters?

After the death of Falwell Sr., many within his tight-knit community expected Jonathan to pick up the mantle. A preacher by training, Jonathan had pastoral sensitivities and a personable nature that his brother Jerry lacked.

“Jonathan’s a great speaker and orator, a people person,” one current top Liberty employee close to the Falwell family told me. “Jerry can’t complete a sentence in person. … He’s nervous. It’s just not him, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

But Jerry had a passion for politics, a talent for riling up a certain type of cultural conservative and a spouse, Becki, who, while publicly playing the role of the quiet, supportive, Baptist housewife, knew how to get her way.

“You know, there’s a head of every family,” said a former university employee who worked closely with Becki Falwell for many years. “But what turns the head? The neck. She’s the neck that turns the head wherever she wants it.”

“Until Big Jerry died, you wouldn’t have known [Becki] if she walked up and slapped you,” said a former longtime Liberty official.“Big Jerry dies, and all of a sudden, [if] you’re walking down the hall and you didn’t greet her right, you’re fired.” As if to underline this point, one longtime university employee shared a 2012email in which Becki contacted four school executives at 7:06 p.m. to complain that a low-level university employee had posted a Facebook status on her personal account criticizing alack of adequate parking on campus. “Someone needs to talk to this girl. I don’t think that we allow employees to post negative remarks about Liberty,” Becki wrote to the school officials in a message that included a screenshot of the employee’s post. Shortly before 9:00 p.m., one senior official replied, “We are attempting to call her at home right now.” The woman in question did not respond to requests for comment, but according to her Facebook profile, she is no longer an employee of Liberty University.

A half-dozen people with inside knowledge of the Falwell family said that, after Falwell’s death, Becki pushed to shrink Jonathan’s role at the university—a move current and former Liberty officials described as the start of Jerry and Becki consolidating power.

Right after his father died,Jonathan held a position with Liberty University that was limited but which allowed him “to make sure [Liberty] kept its compass,” as one former longtime Liberty official put it. According to a 2008 statement announcing Jonathan’s appointment as the school’s vice chancellor for spiritual affairs, his responsibilities would include upholding the “doctrinal integrity of the university” and advising his brother on “matters of faith.”

“We need to make sure … that we never go in any direction that we as a university shouldn’t go,” Jonathan said in the statement at the time. “That’s the area that I’m going to focus on and do everything I can to ensure that my dad’s life’s work stays continuing to fulfill the mission that he had in 1971,” the year the university was formed.

But now, top Liberty officials say Jonathan doesn’t hold any sway—spiritual or otherwise—over the university that grew out of the church he leads. “As a general rule,” said a former high-ranking university official with longstanding ties to Liberty and the Falwell family, Falwell Sr. “spoke every Wednesday in [convocation] all year long. His desire was that whoever was the pastor of Thomas Road would [continue the tradition and] speak at Liberty. I think Jonathan speaks … maybe a few times per year.”

“Jerry neverremovedJonathan,” a former top Liberty official said. “He just kind of pushed him aside.” For one, Jerry used Liberty’s abundant resources to bring his father’s diffuse properties under his control. “He bought all the [Thomas Road Baptist Church] properties, [Liberty Christian Academy], Jonathan’s building at the airport, and a couple of others. Jonathan complained but never stood up to [Jerry] because he knew [Jerry] controlled the purse strings,” the former top official said. Jonathan did not respond to requests for comment.

While longtime confidants of the Falwell family make clear that Becki loves Jonathan—“they’re family after all,” said one former longtime Liberty employee—many feel that she worked hard to make sure that everyone knew it was her husband, and not her brother-in-law, who would assume the elder Falwell’s mantle as a leading figurehead in the conservative evangelical movement. Becki’s message to Jerry, one high-ranking university official said, was simple:Youare Jerry FalwellJunior.

As in: thenewJerry Falwell—the new leader of the Religious Right.

Liberty University has transformedunder Jerry Falwell Jr.’s leadership. When he took over as president in 2007, the school, which is a nonprofit, had listed assets of just over $259 million on its then most recent IRS Form 990; in its filing for the fiscal year ending in June 2017, its assets surpassed $2.5 billion. That number is now more than $3 billion, according to public statements Falwell made in 2018.

That growth is driven largely by a vast increase in the number of online students at the school, who now number some 95,000. Many Falwell confidants are concerned with where they see that university tuition money going: into university-funded construction and real estate projects that enrich the Falwell family and their friends.

Among these projects is a Lynchburg shopping center that is owned by Liberty University but which members of the Falwell family have a personal financial stake in operating, according to emails obtained by me.

In an email dated July 18, 2012, Falwell informed several university executives that his son, Trey Falwell, was “starting a new company to do the management” of properties owned by the school, including the shopping center. Trey Falwell, whose given name is Jerry Falwell III, is now a vice president of Liberty University. On August 7, 2012, Trey registered that privately owned company, JF Management LLC, with Campbell County, Virginia. As the address of its principal office, he gave the location of a house where he and his wife, Sarah, resided.

Experts on tax law and nonprofit organizations said that having the president of a nonprofit university directing university business to a company led by his son would be troubling.

“It raises red flags to have your kids being able to profit off the activities of the organization,” said Philip Hackney, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School who specializes in taxation and nonprofit management. As a general matter of law, “a nonprofit director or officer owes a ‘duty of loyalty’ to the nonprofit. What this means is he cannot take unfair advantage of the nonprofit he controls to his advantage.”

It’s the responsibility of nonprofit leaders to look out for the best interests of their organization, Hackney said, and as a standard practice, those leaders should be able to show how their financial transactions further the nonprofit’s mission in some way.

Asked how the property-management arrangement furthers Liberty’s mission, Falwell said the shopping center was donated to the school in poor condition. “Frankly, there are fewer professional property managers who would be interested in running it for us.”

A stone’s throw from the shopping center is a LaQuinta Inn whose ownership also raises questions about whether Falwell is directing business to family and friends.

The LaQuinta is owned by Comeback Inn LLC, which is registered to Chris Doyle, who manages real estate for the university. In a December 2018 affidavit, Falwell Jr. described Doyle as his “partner in … real estate ventures in Virginia.” Multiple current and former university officials with knowledge of theLaQuinta arrangement said Trey Falwell is a silent shareholder in Comeback Inn.

In an email responding to questions, Doyle declined to discuss the issue. “If my personal and business relationships are of value and interest to the public, I should write a book and [see] no reason to comment at this time,” Doyle said.

Emails obtained for this article show that on at least one occasion, university employees were asked to promote the LaQuinta on the school’s website—what several current and former high-ranking Liberty officials and employees described as part of a process where the school “funnels business” to the hotel.

Falwell denied having a financial interest in Comeback Inn. “I have not financially benefitted from Comeback Inn’s business and I have never owned any interest in Comeback Inn, LLC,” Falwell said in a statement. He did not answer for his son. “I will let Trey Falwell respond separately on his own behalf if he has any comment regarding your question.” Trey Falwell did not respond to requests for comment.

“What I have found over the years is if something doesn’t make sense and Jerry really wants it to happen, he in some form or fashion has a personal interest,” said a current high-ranking Liberty employee with knowledge of Falwell’s financial dealings.

The line between wherethe Falwell family’s wealth begins and Liberty’s finances end is blurry.

University officials describe Liberty loaning money to the Falwells’ friends, even when these loans arguably are not in the school’s financial interests.According to emails and loan documents obtained for this article, in 2014, the university gave loans of at least $200,000 to Prototype Tourism LLC, a “destination marketing” company founded by Liberty graduate Josh Oppenheimer, whom Jerry Falwell Jr. described to me as “a friendly supporter.” According to emails I’ve reviewed, several high-ranking Liberty officials knew about the loan, including Vice President Trey Falwell. The graduate had difficulty repaying the loan—“not surprised,” Trey wrote in an email.

When asked about the loan, Jerry Falwell Jr. clarified the school’s role with Prototype Tourism. “Liberty University was not simply a lender, but was a minority investor in Prototype Tourism, LLC,” he wrote. Falwell described the company’s goal as promoting tourism to Lynchburg. “Due diligence was performed by multiple individuals who discussed the pros and cons and the consensus was that it was worthwhile to proceed,” Falwell wrote. “In the end, I reluctantly agreed with the recommendation and allowed the transaction to proceed. In hindsight, it was not a good decision. … LU lost its investment and the loan portion of the deal was only partially paid back.”

Other loans were precursors to massive contracts. In 2013, Robert Moon, a friend of Falwell’s with deep family ties to the Falwells, founded Construction Management Associates Inc., a construction company devoted to work on and around campus. Previously unreported is the fact that Liberty gave Moon a loan of $750,000 to form the company before awarding it more than $130 million in contracts and selling it land owned by the university.

When I described this arrangement to Hackney, the associate professor at Pitt Law, he said: “This is not standard or good practice. … A nonprofit that is not in the business of loaning money has little reason to be conducting such activity. It raises issues of whether these are in fact charitable activities that further the nonprofit’s mission.”

Asked whether such loans were a common practice for the university, Falwell wrote in an email that “Liberty has considered investments in other local start-up businesses that would help the University’s business model and the local economy.”

“On the other hand,” Falwell continued, “Liberty University has one of the largest unrestricted endowments in the nation and frequently invests in hundreds, if not thousands, of companies across the world purely for the return on investment whether the company has any nexus to Liberty’s mission or not. The same is true of every major university.”

Moreover, Falwell continued, “I have not personally benefited financially from CMA’s or any other contractor’s work for Liberty University nor has any member of my family.”

At the outset, some in Falwell’s inner circle were not so confident in the arrangement with Moon. Before his CMA Inc. became Liberty’s go-to contractor, the school bid out its construction work through an office on campus. (“Free enterprise tends to do pretty well,” one high-ranking university official said.) The prospect of changing that—giving CMA control over campus construction and its associated costs—rankled some senior university officials.

Early on in the CMA partnership, before CMA became the university’s single-largest contractor, Charles Spence, the school’s then-vice president of planning and construction, expressed unease about the high costs Moon was quoting for certain school projects. “Jerry I am very concerned about cost control on all the projects,” he wrote to Falwell in a November 2014 email. “Over the last couple of weeks we have had a lot of meetings and conversations on cost and cost overruns. We are just seeing the information begin to trickle in and there really don’t seem to be good answers just a response that the cost we are seeing are fair, and being handled appropriately.”

“I hope that I am over reacting,”Spence continued, “but I assure you I am concerned.”

“I am fine with going back to bidding every project out if CMA can’t run with the big dogs!” Falwell replied. “Let’s hold their feet to the fire!”

In each of the two years that followed, Liberty paid CMA more than $62 million, part of at least $138 million in contracts from Liberty since the company was formed, according to publicly available tax documents.

Senior Liberty officials might whisper about the propriety of these business deals, but they told me that Falwell’s decisions on campus are rarely ever challenged by the school’s board of trustees. “There’s no accountability,” a former high-ranking university officer said. “Jerry’s got pretty free reign to wheel and deal professionally and personally. The board will approve an annual budget, but beyond that … he doesn’t go to the board to get approval. … It simply doesn’t happen.”

In his statement, Falwell said he and Moon “are on friendly terms and [have] interacted socially in past years but neither of us would list the other on their list of close friends and associates. It is completely a typical arms-length business relationship.”

But there is evidence to the contrary—much of it documented on the Falwells’ own social media accounts.

In June 2013, for instance, the year CMA was formed, Falwell shared a photo on Instagram showing him, Becki and Trey joining Moon for a cruise down the James River on Moon’s private boat. When asked about the photographs, Falwell admitted to joining Moon on his boat “about five or six times.” “These afternoon outings did not cause me to lose my negotiation skills or abandon my fiduciary duties to enter into deals in the interest of the University,” Falwell wrote.

In July 2014, Falwell, Trey and Moon traveled to Miami together. Falwell said in his statement that he recalls “discussing University business” on the trip.

During the trip, photos were taken of Jerry and Trey Falwell partying at a Miami nightclub—photos that multiple Liberty University officials said Jerry Falwell tried to make disappear.

PART II: The Fixer

On July 19, 2014, popular Swedish DJ John Dahlbäck performed at Wall, a nightclub in Miami Beach, Fla. That night, the club happened to have a photographer on-site to grab candid shots of the revelry. The photos were shared online by World Red Eye, an outlet that documents Miami’s nightlife scene, and Jerry and Trey Falwell were visible in some of the pictures—the outlet identified Trey by name.

In a statement on August 21, Jerry Falwell denied the existence of any photo of him at the club. “There was no picture snapped of me at WALL nightclub or any other nightclub,” Falwell wrote. “I’m sure you already knew that though.”

When told that I had obtained a photo of him for this article, Falwell said I was “terribly mistaken.”“If you show me the picture, I can probably help you out,” he wrote. “I think you are making some incorrect assumptions, or have been told false things or are seeing something that was photo–shopped.”

After I sent him the photo, as well as a photo of Trey at Wall, Falwell responded: “I never asked anyone to get rid of any pictures on the internet of me and I never have seen the picture you claim is of me below. If the person in the picture is me, it was likely photo-shopped.” In a second email sent 23 minutes later, Falwell wrote: “But the bigger question, Brandon, is why would I want a picture like that taken down if I had seen it?”

According to several people with direct knowledge of the situation, Falwell—the president of a conservative Christian college that frowns upon co-ed dancing (Liberty students can receive demerits if seen doing it) and prohibits alcohol use (for which students can be expelled)—was angry that photos of him clubbing made it up online. To remedy the situation, multiple Liberty staffers said Falwell went to John Gauger, whom they characterized as his “IT guy,” and asked him to downgrade the photos’ prominence on Google searches. Gauger did not respond to requests for comment.

Gauger has worked at Liberty since earning his MBA from the school in 2009. In 2016, he was promoted to become the school’s chief information officer about a year and a half after he was named deputy CIO. To several university sources, his rapid rise to the C-suite was shocking.

“I’m not being disrespectful, but John was a nobody,” one longtime Liberty official said.“And the next thing you know, he’s high up in IT.”

Longtime Liberty officials describe Gauger as a sort of fixer for Falwell, a man promoted because he would do what Falwell asked of him without complaint. But Gauger is more than just a university employee: Since 2009, Gauger has also run RedFinch LLC, an online business he foundedthat specializes in search-engine marketing and does lucrative contract work for Liberty. Tax records show Liberty paid RedFinch $123,950 during 2016, for what sources described as search-engine recruitment of online students for the university. Gauger did not respond to requests for comment.

RedFinch’s online work for the school goes beyond typical SEO marketing. In an email from August 2013 obtained for this article, Falwell asked Gauger to defend him in the comments section of a local news article that Falwell felt reflected too negatively on him. Falwell even emailed Gauger the exact wording to post.

“I’m having my RedFinch guys blow this up right away,” Gauger responded. “I’ll tell you how it goes.”

When Falwell told Gauger a different employee already chimed into the conversation, Gauger insisted that he’d “have a few accounts turn the conversation elsewhere just for good measure.”

According to several longtime Liberty employees, it’s extremely unusual for university employees to be allowed to own side businesses that do contract work for the school. “I’ve always had a problem with RedFinch because there never was any clear and distinct lines,” one former Liberty employee told me. “You can’t work at Liberty 8-5 on the clockandget paid from somebody else for the same hours.”

Multiple university officials said Gauger is very close, both personally and professionally, with the Falwells, especially Trey.At Liberty, Gauger reports to Trey, and Trey answers only to his dad.

In January, theWall Street Journalreportedthat in 2014 and 2015, Michael Cohen hired Gauger’s side business, RedFinch LLC, to rig online polls in Donald Trump’s favor while he considered a run for the presidency. Gauger’s work consisted of writing a computer script to repeatedly vote for Trump in two online polls; his company would get paid $50,000 in return. Instead, Gauger told theJournalthat after a meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Cohen paid Gauger roughly one-fourth of that amount—between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash—and gave him a boxing glove worn by a mixed martial arts fighter.

Through his lawyer, Cohen, who is serving a three-year prison sentence for tax fraud, making false statements to Congress and violating campaign finance laws, declined a request to comment for this article.

Previously unreported about this incident is that Trey joined Gauger on the January 2015 trip to New York, and posted a photo to Instagramshowing a large amount of cash spread atop a bed in a hotel room. Liberty officials who saw the since-deleted post and described its contents said it raised questions about Trey’s involvement in the pro-Trump poll-rigging effort.

“The idiot posted [a picture of] money on a bed?!” one current senior Liberty official said. “Why do that if you’re not involved with it?”

Liberty officials also pointed to a tweet sent out by the university’s Twitter account on January 23, 2014, linking to one of the polls that theWall Street Journalreported Gauger had rigged. The poll was conducted by CNBC and asked readers to vote for the top American business leaders.

As a nonprofit, Liberty University is legally prohibited from engaging in “political campaign activity,” to use the IRS’ phrase, at the risk of losing its nonprofit status.

When asked about the tweet, Falwell told me he authorized the university’s marketing department to send it as way of thanking Trump for speaking at Liberty. “A representative of the Trump business organization asked for Liberty University to use Twitter to encourage followers to vote for Donald Trump in the annual CNBC poll. We often get requests from Convocation speakers to promote their books, movies, music and other projects. And we do it all the time,” Falwell said. “After speaking for free at [a 2012 Liberty] Convocation and being so complimentary to our University in his remarks, I considered Donald Trump to be a friend of Liberty University and was happy to publicize the poll in hopes that Liberty followers would be willing to vote for him on the heels of his very positive recent campus appearance.”

Falwell noted that at the time the tweet was sent, “Donald Trump was not a candidate for president and no one at Liberty even knew he would run for President.” However, as theWall Street Journalreported—and as several sources independently confirmed in the course of my reporting for this article—Cohen had hired Gauger, a Liberty employee, to rig the poll in Trump’s favor for the purposes of garnering support ahead of his presidential bid.

“A 501(c)(3) organization trying to influence a poll so that a candidate’s fortunes are promoted or demoted is not permitted,” said Eve Borenstein, an attorney and tax expert known as the “Queen of the 990,” a moniker used to introduce her ahead of congressional testimony she gave about the IRS Form 990 in 2012.

While 501(c)(3) organizations are permitted to “do objective analysis of [an] electoral horse race,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, “tweeting out a rigged poll if Liberty knew it was rigged probably does not fall into that safe harbor.”

Liberty officials said that the arrangement is characteristic of how Falwell wields power. “This paints a picture of how Jerry operates,” one former high-ranking university official said. “Gauger gets promoted, [Liberty] contracts for RedFinch for online recruitment … and [Gauger] gets hooked up with people like Cohen to make more money via RedFinch.” And in the end, Falwell gets what he really wants: “A guy that will do whatever he is told.”

Michael Cohen’s connection to Jerry Falwell Jr., veers into deeply personal territory.

In May 2019, Reuters reported that Cohen helped Falwell contain the fallout from some racy “personal” photos.Later that month, Falwell took to Todd Starnes’ radio talk show to rebut the claims.

“This report is not accurate,” Falwell said. “There are no compromising or embarrassing photos of me.”

Members of Falwell’s inner circle took note of the phrasing.

“If you read how Jerry is framing his response, you can see he is being very selective,” one of Falwell’s confidants said. Racy photosdoexist, but at least some of the photos are of his wife, Becki, as theMiami Heraldconfirmed in June.

Longtime Liberty officials close to Falwell told me the university president has shown or texted his male confidants—including at least one employee who worked for him at Liberty—photos of his wife in provocative and sexual poses.

At Liberty, Falwell is “very, very vocal” about his “sex life,” in the words of one Liberty official—a characterization multiple current and former university officials and employees interviewed for this story support. In a car ride about a decade ago with a senior university official who has since left Liberty, “all he wanted to talk about was how he would nail his wife, how she couldn’t handle [his penis size], and stuff of that sort,” this former official recalled. Falwell did not respond to questions about this incident.

More than simply talking with employees about his wife in a sexual manner, on at least one occasion, Falwell shared a photo of his wife wearing what appeared to be a French maid costume, according to a longtime Liberty employee with firsthand knowledge of the image and the fallout that followed.

Falwell intended to send the image to his and Becki’s personal trainer, Ben Crosswhite, as a “thank you” for helping his wife achieve her fitness goals, the employee said. In the course of texting, Falwell accidentally sent the message to several other people, necessitating a cleanup.

In a statement, Falwell denied this. “I never had any picture of Becki Falwell dressed in a French maid uniform, and never sent such a non-existent photo to Ben Crosswhite.”

Crosswhite did not respond to requests for comment.

The Falwells’ close relationship with Crosswhite is the source of consternation for some of Liberty’s top brass because of what they characterize as a sweetheart business deal Falwell had the university offer Crosswhite.

On July 23, 2013, Liberty University began renting space to Crosswhite for use as a fitness center. “The facility was specifically built into the old Racket Club for Jerry and Becki to train privately” with Crosswhite, a longtime university official familiar with the arrangement said. Over the course of the Falwells’ private training,Liberty began to pay for expensive upgrades to the facility, according to documents reviewed for this article. Eventually, in 2015, Falwell had a university executive draft a proposal for Liberty to sell the property to Crosswhite at a discount, paying him up front for Liberty’s use of the facility for the next seven years.

“We raised his rent some to cover the investment. LU then sold it to Ben,” one senior university official said. “Nobody else was allowed to bid on it.”

In a September 2015 email, Liberty University Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Randy Smith wrote Crosswhite to let him know the terms of the deal. The university would sell Crosswhite “the club and all real estate associated with it” for $1,216,000. Liberty employees would be allowed to use the facility, Crosswhite could decide what the value of that was—roughly $82,000 per year, he decided—and the school would pay in advance for seven years of use.

At closing, per Falwell’s approval, Liberty would pay Crosswhite approximately $575,000, which effectively cut Crosswhite’s total cost for the $1.2 million property in half. “The net amount that you would need at closing is $641,062 more or less,” Smith wrote. “After reviewing, if the terms are acceptable to you, then I will get final approval from Jerry to proceed,” Smith wrote Crosswhite.

“Hell of a deal,” a former high-ranking Liberty official told me. “We gave Ben everything he asked for.”

In emails obtained for this article, David Corry, lead counsel for Liberty University, expressed concerns about the appearance of the deal. “Please note, though, that Ben Crosswhite enjoys a close working relationship with several LU administrators, including the President, so I suggest whatever course of action is taken, it is done cordially and professionally with knowledge ahead of time that it may be second guessed,” Corry wrote in a September 2017 email to top Liberty staff.

When asked for comment on August 22, Corry four times asked me to turn over to him the email thread. When Corry was provided the exact wording along with the date he sent the email, he replied that he wasn’t shown his “signature block,” perhaps suggesting he had not sent the email in question. When Corry was presented with a screen shot of his email, including his signature block, he said his comment was taken out of context and alleged the sources for this article “are intentionally feeding you partial facts in hopes you will do their dirty work in a very public way.” On August 27, Reuters broke the news of Liberty’s property sale to Crosswhite.

In a statement for this article, Falwell wrote that the athletic facility had been donated to Liberty University and was “a drain on University resources that was disproportionate to its value.” “I wanted to reverse that and allow the University to get what it needed from the facility but eliminate the annual costs of maintenance, staffing and operations,” Falwell said. “Since Ben Crosswhite would not be receiving full use of the entire property” given the university’s continued use of the facility, Liberty decided “Crosswhite never received full value of the whole property and thus should not pay full price.”

“Unless you are approaching this with some sort of pre-determined outcome, the transaction is very easy to understand,” Liberty COO Smith wrote in an email responding to questions for this article. “It is VERY common practice for the university to dispose of an asset that is in financial and operational distress … especially if it can do it in a fashion that is advantageous to the university. To accomplish that while still making the facility available for the university to use is what most would consider to be a win-win situation.”

Smith said the idea for the financial arrangement used to sell the athletic facility to Crosswhite was his. “I proposed that the university commit to renting … from him for a number of years and we could pay that in the form of a credit at closing,” Smith wrote. “To answer your question, yes, creative deals are commonplace at Liberty University.”

“When I hear the laundry list of interested transactions and the questionable use of Liberty University’s assets … I hear a nonprofit that is not well-governed in a sense that I would hope and expect from a sizable nonprofit,” Pitt Law’s Hackney said. “It has the sense of being managed for a charismatic leader and his family and friends rather than for the mission of Liberty.”

PART III: The Power and the glory

It will surprise no onethat Jerry Falwell Jr. is a Republican. He has that in common with the vast majority of people connected to Liberty. But sometimes his partisan allegiances manifest in ways that directly influence the governance of the school—which, as a nonprofit, must not endorse or oppose candidates for public office.

Just days after the 2008 election of Barack Obama, top university officials were already considering ways to ensure that Liberty students voted in 2010 local elections in Lynchburg. Falwell and university officials weren’t simply talking about the sort of voter-registration drives common at many college campuses; they wanted students to tilt the balance of the election.

In emails obtained for this article, top school officials shared a local newspaper article documenting “concerns in some quarters [of Lynchburg] about the overwhelmingly conservative LU students and the possibility they could alter the balance of power on council and change the course of the city.”

“FYI – The challenge we will have in 2010 is [Lynchburg’s local Election Day] is finals week,” a top Liberty official wrote in a November 9, 2008, email to Falwell and other school leaders. “We would either need to get a polling station at LU or try and make this a reading day to get the kids out to vote.”

Falwell responded to the message just under four hours later, announcing that the problem was now solved: “We changed the calendar by one week. School will now let out on May 14 instead of” May 7.

This wasn’t a fluke. According to a former high-ranking university official who participated in some of these discussions, Falwell often takes “aggressive efforts … to register students in an effort to gain political influence.”

Similarly, in a 2014 email exchange, Falwell complained that Liberty’s commencement date meant that most students would be gone for the summer by the time voting began for Lynchburg’s local elections. “Why did we schedule commencement a week earlier this year?” he wrote in an email to several school executives. When one replied that commencement usually happened during the same weekend each year, Falwell pushed back. “We need to get that corrected for the 2018 graduation or else we will have no students in town to vote in local elections again,” Falwell wrote. “Let’s work on it.”

In the past, Falwell has defended any political actions he’s made as personal stances disconnected from his leadership of Liberty University. “I think our community is mature enough that they understand that all the administrators and faculty have their own personal political views,” he told theWashington Postafter endorsing Trump. But it is as the president and chancellor of Liberty that Falwell changed the academic calendar to influence local politics.

In a statement, Falwell admitted to amending the academic calendar “so that students would not be prevented from voting in local municipal elections that used to be scheduled after their spring term exams.”

“They and their parents pay some of the highest taxes in the nation when it comes to the City meal and hotel taxes,” Falwell said. “It’s only fair that they have some say about who is elected to represent them.”

When I shared my reporting on the school’s date changes, legal experts reached different conclusions as to its propriety.

“This paints a picture of an organization that is intervening on campaigns more than it should,” said Pitt Law’s Hackney, although he added that other universities have “presumably” taken student voting into consideration when creating their schedules.

“Doing anything with the resources of a 501(c)(3) organization to promote or oppose candidates for elective public office is not a permitted operation by a 501(c)(3)-qualified organization under federal tax law,” Borenstein, the tax attorney specializing in nonprofit organizations, wrote in an email.

Still, Falwell’s actions here are “likely fine,” said Torres-Spelliscy, the law professor at Stetson University. “Many schools try to cancel classes or hold no classes on Election Day to encourage students to vote or be poll workers or engage in election protection activities. Though the IRS might consider Falwell’s stated partisan motivation if the IRS investigated Liberty to challenge its 501(c)(3) status, this type of investigation is highly unlikely.” In fact, according to Ellen April, a professor of tax law at Loyola Law School, a very small number of 990 Forms are ever investigated. “The IRS is able to do very little enforcement of the rules applicable to 501(c)(3) because of their limited” resources.

Observers snickered whenDonald Trump visited Liberty’s campus in2016, veered off script and infamously referred to the Bible’s Second Corinthians as “two Corinthians”—making it appear as if he were learning of the biblical book for the first time. But his promises to religious conservatives—chief among them, his guarantee that he would fill Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court empty seat with a justice who opposed abortion rights—and his choice of Mike Pence as his running mate mobilized evangelicals to support him in 2016. In CNN’s exit poll from that November, 26 percent of the electorate described themselves as white born-again or evangelical Christians; 80 percent of them voted for Trump.

In 2017, with Trump in office and evangelicals strongly supporting him, the Falwells saw a branding opportunity, according to emails obtained for this article.

That spring, after Trump was invited to deliver the school’s commencement address, Becki Falwell asked university counsel Corry to look into whether Liberty could “permit third-party vendors to sell t-shirts and hats [on campus] during commencement weekend.” Corry advised that because of a contract between the university and Barnes & Noble, which had the exclusive right to sell “clothing, including any and all such items bearing Liberty University emblem, logo, insignia, or other identifying mark” on campus, the answer “depends upon who is selling them and whether Barnes & Noble consents.”

“I want to make sure that we have a lot of options available to purchase,” Becki Falwell replied, adding additional Liberty officials to the email thread. “It’s great advertising for Liberty to be on products with Trumps name.”

In a follow-up email to the Liberty officials, Becki wrote, “I spoke to Michael Cohen and he said to make sure any shirts we buy are made in America! He loved the designs!”

The school ended up printing and selling Trump T-shirts and hats. The shirts, in MAGA red with white type, read “TRUMP” in large block letters and “Liberty University Commencement 2017” in a much smaller font size. Another design, used on both hats and T-shirts, borrowed Trump’s campaign slogan and signature style: an all-caps “Making America Great Again,” then in a script font: “One degree at a time.”

“Liberty University actually benefited by having President Donald Trump speak at commencement and by associating his brand with the University’s brand,” Jerry Falwell said in a statement, expressing his disappointment that the emails were shared. “Because Donald Trump is conservative, there is a benefit for a conservative Christian school to be associated with him, so long as the association does not cross the legal line set by the federal government.”

Told about the merchandise, experts suggested that the Trump-Liberty T-shirts might cross that line. “A 501(c)(3) organization cannot be selling those shirts or gifting space to someone selling t-shirts with a candidate’s name on it, since that is advertisingfora candidate,” Borenstein said.

Ever since Falwell endorsed Trumpahead of the 2016 Iowa caucuses, political pundits have speculated that Trump was simply using Falwell to achieve his own political ends. That might be true: From his regular appearances at evangelical events to his claim that he single-handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas,” Trump seems to be keen on shoring up his evangelical base. What better way to do that than to cultivate a very public relationship with the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr.’s son?

But multiple associates of Jerry Falwell Jr. said the popular narrative is backward: It’s not Trump who has the most to gain from the relationship, it’s Falwell. Trump just went along with the arrangement.

Falwell has become known as a Trump loyalist who is willing to put his—and his school’s—reputation on the line to defend the president from any critic. In Trump, Falwell said in 2017, “evangelicals have found their dream president.” When asked by theWashington Postlate in 2018 if there were “anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders,” Falwell said “No.”In a May 2019 tweet about the Mueller investigation, Falwell appropriated the language of reparations for descendants of slaves to argue Trump’s term should be lengthened: “I now support reparations. Trump should have 2 yrs added to his 1st term as pay back for time stolen by this corrupt failed coup.”

In Trump, Falwell has found the opportunity to secure his own status as one of America’s preeminent Christian political leaders—the chance to finally obtain the national relevance of his father. Now, Falwell is a national figure—a friend to a president, a man prone to outspoken statements that rile critics and endear him to supporters, a major leader on the religious right despite not being a pastor. He is closer than ever before to the kind of status the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr. wielded.

But for those at Liberty who know both Falwell Jr. and his late father, there’s no comparing the men.

“Jerry��s daddy was a respectable, honest, decent, hardworking man,” said a longtime Liberty official who worked for both father and son. “Big Jerry hired people that were smart and capable and put them around himself. He made sure you knew you were appreciated. There was never an ego involved. You knew you were working for a higher calling. Jerry’s father was very generous and promoted all of us in an enlightening way.”

With Falwell Sr., “you could feel his passion and love for the Lord and others. He knew everyone’s names, their stories and struggles. He was genuine and loving. And that love bled from the campus,” a former longtime university official said. “It’s a cold place now.”

“With [Jerry’s] dad, there were never questions about his business dealings or whether he was profiting from a business deal,” said still another former longtime high-ranking Liberty official who worked closely with both men. “There was never a hint or suspicion of that because Falwell Sr. was only doing things that were for the benefit of the university or church—not for himself.”

The feeling is different with Junior in charge.

One source pointed to a tweet Jerry Falwell Jr. sent out in June 2019 criticizing David Platt, an evangelical Virginia pastor who apologized for welcoming Trump to his church. “I only want to lead us with God’s Word in a way that transcends political party and position, heals the hurts of racial division and injustice, and honors every man and woman made in the image of God,” Platt said. “Sorry to be crude,” wrote Falwell in a since-deleted tweet, “but pastors like [David Platt] need to grow a pair.”

After Falwell came under criticism for his tweet about Platt, he responded to critics with a two-part Twitter thread, which, in the words of one current high-ranking Liberty official, “a lot of people found troubling.”

“I have never been a minister,” Falwell tweeted. “UVA-trained lawyer and commercial real estate developer for 20 yrs. Univ president for last 12 years-student body tripled to 100000+/endowment from 0 to $2 billion and $1.6B new construction in those 12 years. The faculty, students and campus pastor @davidnasser of @LibertyU are the ones who keep LU strong spiritually as the best Christian univ in the world. While I am proud to be a conservative Christian, my job is to keep LU successful academically, financially and in athletics.”

To those who worked for Liberty under the late Rev. Falwell, the sentiment appeared to signal a serious departure from his father’s legacy. “Bragging about business success and washing his hands of any responsibility for spiritual life at the university—that was frankly a pretty Trumpian line of commentary,” said one former university official with longstanding ties to both Liberty and the Falwell family.

Under Falwell Jr., Liberty University is “a totally dysfunctional organization,” one board member wrote in an email reviewed for this article. “Very similar to Trump’s White House.”

#Aides #break #Foreign #Politics

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tabernacleheart · 5 years

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Pop-culture images of Easter surround me: wicker baskets, dyed eggs, super-cute children, bunnies galore (both varieties: stuffed and chocolate), and pastel everything. I started researching something else and ended up following a link to read the history of marshmallow Peeps! It is easy to get caught up in the illusion. I think this reflects our all-too-human desire to focus on what is easy, comfortable, traditional, known. Often our Easter worship follows this same path, speeding along a direct highway from the “Alleluia!” of Palm Sunday to the “He is risen!” of Easter without risking the dodgy neighborhoods or Holy Week’s harrowing curves and valleys. As much as I delight in the jubilant squeals of my nephews and niece scampering around the lawn looking for colored eggs, this is not where Easter hope is born. Indeed, crucifixion is all around us. Terrorist attacks and grave environmental degradation continue around the globe. White supremacists march, and thousands die in seemingly daily mass shootings in the USA. The #MeToo movement reveals the pervasiveness of sexual harassment, abuse, and rape in our culture. The indigenous, people of color, LGBTQIA+, and women continue to experience oppression and marginalization. And the poor continue to suffer on our periphery. We cannot deny the reality of crucifixion in our world. How can we celebrate Easter in light of all the needless suffering? I propose that we can celebrate resurrection only in light of the crucifixion—that this is the only Easter observance, an observance in full view of the cross, that means anything. How then shall we live this resurrection in meaningful ways? There once was a world where church held a place of honor in society, and all we had to do was open our doors, provide faithful worship, and wait for (or maybe attract) people to come. But that world no longer is the one in which we live. We can look at this change as a problem or an opportunity. Regardless of the volume or velocity of change, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rachel, and Ruth is the God who has been active in our past and will be active in our future. As Peter L. Steinke declares in his book, A Door Set Open: 'I believe the paradigm shift of rapid change constitutes a rich opportunity for the church. God has set the door open to the future. God’s future arrives in the person of Jesus Christ.' Albert Einstein remarked that imagination is more important than knowledge, for while knowledge points to what is, imagination points to what will be. My congregation, Norton Heights, sometimes struggles to discern God’s preferred future for us. Our church is in a beautiful, historic, diverse neighborhood in northeast Kansas City, Missouri, that is plagued by poverty and violence. One of our members, Leon Berg, had been living downtown, but he recently moved back into the area, just blocks from the church. This helped him see the neighborhood through the eyes of its residents, rather than as a commuter. Last year Kansas City suffered a record 149 homicides, several in the Norton Heights/Northeast vicinity. Instead of experiencing them as detached numbers on a computer screen or in a newscast, Leon experienced them as the neighborhood does—hearing gunshots and sirens, double-checking locks on doors and windows, dreading the news. Leon began to imagine what the congregation’s response might be. Many of those murdered had no funeral or memorial service. How could the Norton Heights Congregation stand with the neighborhood to Pursue Peace on Earth and the Worth of All Persons? As he thought and prayed, he received a response. The words, “Remember them,” came forcefully to mind, accompanied by an image of a field of white crosses. Leon shared his hope with the congregation, and we agreed to go where we felt Christ was calling us—further into the neighborhood to stand in solidarity in grief over the violence and death in our midst and in hope for a day when people will live to their potential, and peace will reign. Hope is a funny thing. It invites us to act in ways that are concrete and adventurous. Shared hope can get people past “we can’t.” We decided to hold an outdoor sunset vigil for the slain. The congregation bought wood and cut, constructed, painted, and planted 136 crosses with 136 names (the number of murders for the year in Kansas City at the time). Everyone participated, from the Tuesday-night neighborhood youth group to the Thursday-night spirituality group to a special Sunday hands-on worship service that included information gathering; silent prayer for the victims, perpetrators, and their families; poetry composition; and cross-painting as worship elements. We also walked the neighborhood, explaining and inviting—a cold day filled with images of locked doors, barred windows, broken sidewalks, conversations with youth hanging around steps, and children of all colors and ethnicities peeking at us from behind legs as we knocked on doors and talked to parents and grandparents. As we walked the neighborhood, talking with neighbors and local businesses, I found myself thinking a lot about what it means to be Easter people in a Good Friday world—this particular Good Friday neighborhood and my responsibility to be a disciple for these families and children in the face of the likely future of poverty and violence they face. God’s preferred future looks very different. As Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest, Father Gustavo Gutiérrez reminds us, resurrection hope isn’t synonymous with sitting around and waiting for something good to happen. It implies concrete effort in daily life to generate reasons for that hope. “Hope is a gift, but you don’t receive that gift if you’re not creating resources for it,” he says. “Reasons for hope don’t just drop from the sky. They come from below, from what people are doing or not doing.” While the neighborhood responded positively, the reactions from church members outside the congregation were mixed. We received encouragement, but also questions and criticism. How will sticking 136 crosses in the ground advance Christ’s mission? How will anything be different the day after the vigil? These are reasonable questions. All we know is that scripture writers from Isaiah to Matthew assure us God is powerfully present precisely when people feel helpless and bereft, and God rejoices in each faithful step taken. Jesus lived among the downtrodden and disenfranchised, so it seemed to us that this might be the right place for us as disciples as well. Our action was not transactional. We did not expect to “get” anything from it. We simply responded the best we knew how, in faith. As Walter Brueggemann reminds us, in a broken world, hope and lament are partners. Peter Steinke, again from A Door Set Open, uses the well-known story of the elephant and the blind seekers. Each one touches a different part of the animal and assumes something completely different about what the entire elephant must be like. Mission, says Steinke, is like that. No congregation has to cover every part of the elephant. Touch whatever aspect of mission is within reach. Touch the mission where it appears. Norton Heights touched the mission where it appeared, and the vacant lot next door was transformed into a place where the real lives of neighborhood people and church people began to overlap, a “door set open” so that relationship and even community might form. For though the world shows ample evidence of the crucifixion, we know the story of resurrection, for those with hope to tell it. We know that, even standing in a field of 136 crosses, death does not have the last say, and suffering love ultimately is more powerful than money, power, and appearances. In response to Christ’s way, crucifixion is the world’s no, but resurrection is God’s resounding yes! We are a church that believes in Continuing Revelation. What God reveals in the resurrection is that the unexpected gift of the empty tomb cannot be separated from the words and actions of Jesus. Resurrection is not some fluffy ideal made of marshmallow Peeps and bunny ears, unconnected to the real world. Resurrection is an invitation to live as Jesus lived, both difficult and joyful, a doorway into a life where meals are shared with the stranger among us, captives are set free, healing is offered to the hopeless, and prophetic challenge is issued to the powerful. Only now it is not Jesus who does these things; it is we ourselves who do them—seeing at last the signs of new life springing up all around us. It is we ourselves who see the incredible hope and subversive power of the resurrection in order to live it in our own lives. But it simply won’t work if we pause for others to come to us, sitting in our comfortable pews, waiting for them to listen patiently and politely. They will have to see resurrection in us. The resurrected Christ is in our communities, waiting for us to meet him there. Step forward in faith. Touch the mission where it appears. Let your hope become action this Easter season!

Michele McGrath

#Michele McGrath #Christian community #community of christ #comfort the sorrowful #The Resurrection #easter #good friday #suffering #sharing in the sufferings of christ #love thy neighbor #hope #christ has no body now but yours #service

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appreciatedinretrospect · 6 years

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Music Recommendations #4

Here’s a reading playlist

Pennywise- Never Gonna Die

I don’t know if I could say that Pennywise are underrated, but they’re criminally under appreciated. They’ve aged gracefully throughout aspects of the mainstream punk world hitting a collective wall. They have an undeniably signature sound and it never fails to progress somehow. It’s rare to find a band that has never released a slump album (even a respectable one with a different singer) and plays on their twelfth album like their livelihood depended on it. Never Gonna Die is a shock to the system. A fascist reality television administration will light a fire in any self respecting punk rock band. They address far more than our president being a dumbass who got in office because of the 2016 election being hacked and hate mongering. I can feel singer Jim Lindberg’s frustration of watching our racist, clickbait instagram circus culture is becoming the norm. Though Pennywise has been pointing this out for almost three decades. Musically Never Gonna Die maintains a healthy diversity in tempo and aggression mixed with Fletcher Dragge’s constantly evolving approach to writing punk riffs and desperately intense chord progressions. As a fan of punk music, I take pride in when the legends can still produce records that exceed expectation. They’re great rather than just being passable. A critic will turn their nose up at this album and probably slag it off as Pennywise just being Pennywise. Take a deeper listen to the composition and songwriting. Punk isn’t going anywhere, you just have to want it.

Released: April 20, 2018

Label: Epitaph

Zeke- Hellbender

Speaking of, if you’re into ridiculously fast rocknroll and Zeke isn’t in your rotation yet, you’re messing up. Zeke will kick your ass, drink all your beer and steal your girlfriend all at the same time. If anyone was feeling a void after Lemmy Kilimister leaving us, listen to this Zeke album. I’ve always felt like Zeke was punk’s best kept secret. After a fourteen year long hiatus they’ve come back with Hellbender. It’s exactly how it sounds and it’s exactly what it looks like: A catchy hyper speed album telling stories of sex, drugs, rocknrolll and partying with the devil. Probably on a motorcycle. It’ll all make sense once you hear it. Be prepared for a fight.

Released: March 30, 2018

Label: Relapse

Courtney Barnett- Tell Me How You Really Feel

I love second albums. They can serve many purposes, but most of the time they’re a response to listeners anticipating something worse or even better from the first album they built a relationship with. Second albums can make or break an artist. Sometimes they do make an underwhelming second effort due to pressure or the fact that you have your entire life to make a first album and maybe a year to make your second. Courtney Barnett created an earnest and concise body of work that will give her career longevity. Sincerity goes a long way. Anybody who’s aware of Courtney Barnett knows that her words are potentially the most important weapon in her arsenal. The songs revolve around getting the words out. This time around, the melody, lyrics and music are all having a more collaborative conversation. All still just as honest and telling of situations most of us couldn’t put into words ourselves. Certainly not four minute songs with a electric guitar. That growth in songwriting resulted in familiar feeling songs that maintain transparency simply by just having something important to say. I feel like Daria would have enjoyed this album. It depicts loneliness and isolation from the world’s insanities. Something I connect to deeply. Emotionally daunting situations that only exacerbate a pre existing anxiety. Questioning yourself and others, maybe even existence itself. There’s nothing easy or simple about being an HSP watching other people enjoying life purely and ignorantly while constantly thinking about everything affects each other. My personal favorite moment on the album was the pairing of songs Nameless, Faceless and I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch. Both share a sentiment women feel across the planet.

I wanna walk through the park in the dark Men are scared that women will laugh at them I wanna walk through the park in the dark Women are scared that men will kill them

I’m glad we have Courtney Barnett right now. Not to throw the rock savior moniker on her that we did to other Aussie rock acts, but that honesty and poetic nature is something we do need right now.

Released: May 18, 2018

Label: Milk!/Mom + Pop/Marathon Arists

A Perfect Circle- Eat The Elephant

I can already tell this is going to be polarizing. I also feel like it’s going to be further under the radar than expected. Speaking of expectation, also taking a fourteen year along hiatus, fans have already built up five different versions of what they thought they wanted or even deserved to hear from A Perfect Circle in such a long span of time. You’re not the same person fourteen years later. Some people moved on after the wave passed. Others waited patiently, hopefully knowing that it’ll come when the time is appropriate. Eat The Elephant does nothing short of hit all of it’s marks. Anything they did was going to be seen as a disappointment. Having an album predominately centered around a piano doesn’t help that case to the mass public either. Personally, I feel like this is their best album since Thirteenth Step. How does it not delver? They’re still the same epic and emotionally driven band making cinematic music. Some of those elements have only been amplified. The original presentation of the band was bringing together the heavy elements founder Billy Howerdel wanted and the softer ambient moments from singer Maynard Keenan. This time around they found themselves making a more desolate pop album with an orchestra fit to score a film behind them. The progressions have an even more straight forward pop structure and have been stripped down to mainly piano. The guitars are elements of textures adding to the movement of the music rather than being the core focus. Eat The Elephant might be a more direct homage to their influences than the band may have even thought. There’s sounds and vocal deliveries you never would have heard on a Tool or A perfect Circle record a decade ago. But check out The Cure’s Pornogrpahy or Siouxsie and The Banshees Tinderbox and draw the comparisons throughout the years and certainly on this album. It’s all still there. Maynard’s blunt lyricism is an observation of the lows our society has dropped into. Obsession with materialism, believing in false prophets, racism ad how we’ve destroyed the planet with mindlessness and greed are all prevalently woven into every line on the album. It’s a desperate attempt to call out for finding change from within ourselves instead of trying to force it elsewhere. They brought something refreshing back to big rock music without it getting away from them. There’s something important to say, I’m afraid not many people will hear it. At east not right now. The not so discrete perfection in the flow of this album will be appreciated later down the line once judgement becomes less foggy. We’ll just have to live with it for a while until then.

Released: April 20,2018

Label: BMG

#pennywise #never gonna die #zeke #hellbender #courtney barnett #tell me how you really feel #a perfect circle #eat the elephant #new music #music blog #music writing #music #2018 #albumrelease #album review

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talabib · 7 years

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How To Motivate And Inspire People Through The Art Of Storytelling.

The art of storytelling predates nearly every other human invention. It’s no surprise either, considering the amazing power that stories have to totally capture our attention and excite our emotions, transporting us into strange and captivating worlds.

But stories aren’t just pleasant ways to pass the time or get a thrill; they’re also valuable tools. In fact, storytelling was among the first and best ways to impart valuable information and motivate behavior. And that’s no less true today than it was during human prehistory.

This post is about the power of the story as well as the components that make them compelling. Here you’ll learn why and how so many businesses are already using the power of storytelling to motivate your behavior, as well as what you can do to incorporate storytelling into your own life and career.

Storytelling is an important aspect of any successful business.

Why is it that some of the longest-running shows on televisions are soap operas? People just love a good story. Whether it’s the drama in a soap or a riveting page-turner, we become completely captured by good stories.

But it’s not only authors and screenwriters who have profited from the art of storytelling. In fact, a great deal of businesses have as well: Nike, Microsoft, FedEx and Costco each have their own corporate storyteller.

Stories are critical components of corporate messaging towards customers and employees alike. For most of human history, storytelling has been the primary method for imparting knowledge. Before the printing press made possible the mass distribution of written materials, most information was shared via oral tradition in the form of stories.

Indeed, storytelling offers some unique advantages over other types of communication: First, anyone can tell and learn from a story. A good story can transfix anyone, regardless of age or education.

In addition, stories are memorable. It’s quite difficult to remember an isolated fact or a statistic. However, according to psychologist Jerome Bruner, if these facts are put into a story, we’re 20 times more likely to remember them.

Finally, stories can appeal to every type of learner. There are three types of learners: 40 percent of us are visual learners, 40 percent are auditory learners and the remaining 20 percent are kinetic learners. Stories attract all three – a story’s imagery influences visual learners, the vocabulary appeals to auditory learners and the emotions and feelings connect with kinetic learners.

As you can see, stories are a great way to impart knowledge, so much so that businesses have incorporated them into their strategies.

Capturing customer stories can greatly improve your customer service.

When was the last time that you had a remarkable – or horrible – customer service experience? Did it motivate you to leave kudos for the customer service representative in the “how are we doing” box? Or maybe leave a scathing review on Yelp?

If you’ve ever left a review, then you’ve done that company a favor. In fact, these stories are a great way for consumers to share insights on how to get customer service right. Consider the story of Ray Brook, who was visiting Portland, Oregon for two busy days filled with meetings:

Not living in Portland, he needed a car and decided to hire one from National Car Rental. Once he got to the counter he was shocked to discover that his driver’s license had expired a mere few days prior, meaning the company couldn’t legally lend him a vehicle. He was in trouble: how on earth was he going to make it to his meetings?

The next day, as he waited on his new license, National Car Rental employees agreed to drive him around – from his meeting to his hotel and then to another meeting. And they even drove him to the DMV to renew his license!

Naturally, Brook was astounded by the quality of service they had provided him and so he wrote a letter to the CEO of National, commending their actions. Impressed, the CEO began using this story during speeches to his staff all across America. Brook’s story of staff going the extra mile became the new standard expected of National employees.

Indeed, a good customer-service story is useless if no one knows about it. As a leader, you can capture a great opportunity to learn, simply by ensuring that customers have a place to record their experiences.

For example, you could create a “story box” on your website, give customers self-addressed envelopes to encourage them to share their stories or even just scour customer review sites to gleam stories about your company.

Often the best way to spread a company’s values and culture is through stories.

How many businesses promise to “put the customer first” or declare that its employees are “the most important part of the business?” These hollow messages are a dime-a-dozen, and customers and employees alike are well within their minds to consider them utterly meaningless.

A company's values and culture are best spread through compelling stories, not vague slogans or hollow promises.

We can see a prime example of this from 2011, when the revolution in Egypt took a violent turn and foreigners living in the country began fleeing to the airports. However, due to the instability there, most flights from the country were being cancelled. Amongst those attempting to flee was Rasoul Madadi, an employee of Procter & Gamble (P&G), and his family.

Struggling to get out, Madidi called P&G. The company promised to do whatever they could, buying him and his family tickets for five flights in order to ensure that flight cancellations wouldn’t prevent him from leaving.

When one of the flights finally took off, the company ensured that Madadi would receive accommodation and supplies upon landing. They really did put him first. Stories like these are worth a million slogans like, “We value our employees.” It shows people a company's true values with actions, not just words.

Stories also help employees to understand what is really expected of them. This is crucial, since these expectations sometimes differ from the actual rules. For example, companies may say that they offer flexibility for employees who are expecting children, but people nonetheless often worry that they will end up on the losing side of the deal.

Stories are a great way to close the gap and increase employees’ confidence in their company. For instance, P&G shares stories on their websites about new mothers who’ve used and benefitted from the company’s flexible working policies as a way to clearly demonstrate to others that they have nothing to fear from taking advantage of this flexibility.

Use stories to forge strong relationships between diverse team members.

Most of us who work for large companies don’t know our colleagues very well. We might become true friends with one or two coworkers, but we likely won’t get past such shallow topics as “Nasty weather today, huh?” or “Did you see the game last night?” with most of the team.

However, as a leader, you want your employees to build relationships. So how can you overcome this obstacle? One way is through stories.

Motivating people to share stories with one another can be the best way to build up strong relationships within a team. Take the story of Jamie, for example, who, despite being the head of his team, couldn’t seem to make real friends with anyone at work.

Then one day the team had a bonding session, in which they each had to share a story. Jamie used the opportunity to open up about his life, speaking about how his brother who had suffered from bipolar disorder and killed himself.

The story left most of his group in tears, and it brought them closer to him. They realized that he was more than just a co-worker: he is a human being, with depth and complexity.

His personal story helped transform him from a stranger with whom everyone shared an office into a relatable person. It created a strong bond between him and his team, meaning that he was happier at work and that his team was more willing to work hard for him.

Furthermore, stories can also help you build a diverse team. There’s no debate in the business world that diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones, so it’s important to diversify your team’s skills and experiences.

Yet, building such a team can be difficult, as some people behave negatively towards others without realizing it. Stories, however, offer members of the team a means to share their discomfort in a way that can help others understand and change their behavior accordingly.

Rulebooks are no substitute for a good story when it comes to making and spreading company policy.

Be honest: have you ever read through all the documents that outline the rules and regulations of your company? Chances are, even if you are in C-level management, that you haven’t. So, how do you learn all the rules?

Perhaps the most obvious way is trial and error, simply doing what you feel is appropriate and then correcting your behavior after being reprimanded. However, while this may help a few people learn a few things, this method can only provide limited knowledge. After all, how many rules does the average employee actually break?

In order to bridge this gap between personal experience and company policy, leaders can use stories as a way to inform employees of what they should and shouldn’t do.

For instance, when new P&G employees begin their employment, they are told the story of two workers who abused the company’s free cafeteria service for trainees. Even after having worked for the company for a while, they continued sneaking in for a free lunch.

They got away with it for some time; security in the canteen wasn’t very strict and no one had to show identification or prove that they were in training in order to enter. The company simply trusts that only those who are entitled to the service would use it.

Yet, in the end their desire to get something for nothing got the better of them. They visited the cafeteria so often that staff eventually became suspicious and called management, who caught the cheaters and had them fired.

So what lessons does this story teach? Employees learn, whether they've read the rulebook or not, that they won’t get away with taking advantage of the company’s generosity. All it takes is a simple, compelling story to make policy become clear and understandable.

Stories can be used to inspire employees, even when times are tough.

Imagine that you are bringing a long, exhausting project to a close, and you want to start slowing down your efforts and moving on to a new, exciting project. Your boss, however, disagrees. What can she do to motivate you to continue and keep giving it your all?

She could spout nonsensical motivational phrases about “giving it 110 percent” – or she could tell you an inspiring story. We can draw some inspiration from history by looking at the famous story of the Tanzanian runner John Stephen Akhwari:

As Akhwari was running in an Olympic marathon in 1968, he suffered a fall and dislocated his knee. He could have easily given up right then, accepted medical treatment and left for home. But he didn’t. He got back on his feet and, in agony, kept going.

An entire hour after the winner had crossed the finish line, Akhwari finally entered the stadium to the cheers of those who had stayed to the end.

After finishing, he was asked why he’d kept going. He replied: “My country didn’t send me 5,000 miles to start this race, they sent me 5,000 miles to finish it.”

Leaders can use his story, or similar stories, to inspire people to keep going until the work is finished, knowing that people will respect them and admire them for it.

Such stories can also help prevent people from jumping ship at the first sign of trouble. Managers can inspire staff to continue onward with stories of companies that faced misfortune, but that persevered and reached success.

For example, when P&G launched Pringles, sales were initially good but soon started to slip. While they could have scrapped the project in search of easier profits, they instead kept going. They made some improvements to their recipe based on customer feedback and relaunched the product, making Pringles one of the best-selling chip brands today.

A successful story is comprised of only three ingredients: context, action and a result.

At school, we learn that a story needs a beginning, middle and end. In more scientific jargon, you need context, action and the result (CAR). And what’s true for schoolchildren is true for business as well.

Let’s start with context: The context stage of a story is crucial – without it, the audience doesn’t know what’s going on. But what do you need to provide context for? A good place to start is where and when your story takes place. This helps the audience discern whether the story is true or hypothetical.

You also need to establish who your protagonist is as well as what she wants, and who or what the antagonist is.

When you’re establishing context, it’s important that you try your best to ensure that your audience can relate to your story as much as possible. The more the audience members can relate, the more they’ll take notice, which means that you should probably leave out fanciful worlds with superheroes and kings.

With everything set up, you can then move on to the action. This is where your hero battles against her enemies who stand in the way of her goals. In your story, this might be an employee battling his boss in order to try out his revolutionary business strategy.

Here, you don’t have to overburden your audience with details. You just need to grip them with a good mixture of success and failure for your hero.

Finally you’re left with the result of your hero’s actions: the conclusion to your story. Who triumphs in the battle between hero and villain? This is where the audience members will learn the moral of your story: should they follow the hero’s path to victory, or use his story as a precautionary tale?

The most effective stories play on people’s emotions.

No matter what the content of the story actually is, a good story hinges on its ability to evoke the emotions of the audience.

However, you don’t want to evoke just any emotions. If you want your audience to become motivated by your story, you’ll have to appeal to the right emotions. For instance, it’s easy to get people teary-eyed when you tell them a heartwarming story about puppies, but this won’t be that useful to you unless you own a pet store.

We can take an example from Texas, which in the 1980s was ridden with so-called “litterbugs.” The government tried its best to combat littering by appealing to emotions, publishing advertisements that showcased a Native American weeping at the sight of environmental destruction due to litter.

While touching, these ads had no effect. The worst litterers were people with little concern for the environment or minority groups such as Native Americans.

So, the government changed directions, this time producing an ad featuring Texas’s greatest sports stars and musicians and connecting littering with damaging Texas itself. This time, they evoked the right emotions from their audience: the litterers were very proud of their state and their heritage, and hearing the anti-littering message from their heroes hit home. Littering in Texas dropped 72 percent in the time immediately after running these ads.

But how do you know which emotional connections to make for your stories. Most stories will come from customer feedback, and the easiest place to find this feedback is in customer surveys.

P&G used this tactic in 2008 when they asked customers how the economic downturn affected them. They received many replies detailing people’s fears about not being able to pay the bills or maintain their standard of living.

So, if they wanted to launch a product that would save people money, for instance, then these stories would have been very effective at evoking the right emotions.

Fill your story with surprises to pique your audience's interest and memory.

You’re at a conference and you feel your eyelids growing heavier and heavier as you listen to a speaker drone for hours. When he finally finishes, how much of the story do you expect to remember? Probably next to nothing.

For more memorable storytelling, inject your stories with a bit of surprise. If there is any sort of shocking action in your story, do your best to squeeze it into the beginning. For example, if your story takes place in a turbulent environment – perhaps during a revolution or on Wall Street during a stock-market crash – then use this information when you establish the context. This way, your audience will be transfixed from the very beginning.

You can also help your audience remember your story by adding surprise to the end. Surprise at the end sticks because of a brain phenomenon called memory consolidation: whenever we experience something, our memories aren’t formed immediately, but in the moments following.

During memory consolidation, it’s possible to influence a memory’s stickiness by attaching memories to certain stimuli. One such stimuli is adrenaline, which is released when the body experiences a rush, often brought on by shock or surprise.Thus, ending your story with a surprise will help your audience members retain their memory of the story.

Sometimes putting surprises in the right places requires a little creativity regarding how you structure the story. Take this story about never giving up, for example:

At 22 he lost his job. At 25 he ran for state parliament, only to be defeated. Then, at 34 he aimed for a seat in congress, and failed again. At 45 he ran for the senate, was defeated and then he tried again at 49 but lost again. But two years later all this failures were forgotten when he became immortalized as our sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln.

In this case, by withholding the name, we can create a straightforward story with a memorable surprise twist.

Storytelling is one of the best ways to impart knowledge and motivate behavior, and as such is a key instrument to successful leadership. From more efficient customer service to defining your company’s culture and setting strong values, storytelling is a versatile tool that can improve every aspect of your business.

#storytelling

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