The “window problem” of power and activism

The idea here is that people have limited windows in which they can accomplish certain things. There’s a “window” for life, which is probably give or take 80-90 years for the healthiest among us, and then there’s a “window” for athletic achievement, which is typically 14 to 40 or so, relative to sport. There are “windows” for career success attainment, usually 20s to 50s, but that “window” is narrowing with the rise of ageism.

Probably the biggest “window” that drives a lot of decision-making is child-bearing, because while the whole narrative of “you should do this at 30” is kinda cooked books (my aunt had a kid at 42, and Savannah Guthrie appears to have had her first kid at around that age), many women still hit about 29, see their friends posting baby shots on The Gram, and think “I am behind.”

Look at politics too. Mitch McConnell became Majority Whip in the 108th Congress, then was re-elected to that post in 2004. In 2006, he was elected Senate Minority Leader. He held that until 2015, when GOP took control of the Senate. He had a nine-year window where he was outflanked power-wise; now he’s in power, for the Senate, but that could literally end this upcoming January. So he has a window of power and being able to get stuff through.

So how do windows impact power and activism?

You look at something like climate change. It’s bad. Some people claim it’s a hoax, but it’s bad. It will greatly impact humanity — but, the greatest impact will be seen in probably 120+ years. Not a single person currently on the planet will be alive. So, there’s a “window” to life, and there’s an upper limit to what you can care about in between yourself, your health, your family, your friends, your kids, your career, your day-to-day “stuff,” etc. Why would you care about something that potentially not even your grandchildren will experience the worst of? This is sometimes called “inter-temporal discounting.”

So yes, you can take actions to benefit climate change, no doubt. But … what does it matter within your “window” of being able to experience life on Earth?

Now look at the situation with SCOTUS right now. As I mentioned above, McConnell has a window of power. He had that window in 2016 too. He’s working within his window because he doesn’t know if it will ever return. Now, is it morally right? No. But is it illegal? No, not that either. Now, there’s a good newsletter from this morning by Judd Legum about “hypocrisy vs. cruelty” that you should check out for a deeper dive herein. But McConnell and his people are chasing their window. At some point, maybe very soon, that window will close — and no doubt the “other side” (“Lunatic Libs” is the Twitter term, I believe) will do things to maximize their window.

Now think of a VP of Sales. I was working at a cybersecurity company in 2018 for a bit. New VP of Sales came in. Dude looked like a penis. Worse than Bezos. This company had a reputation for terminating Sales VPs quick, so this guy knows he needs to hit the ground running and make big impact to impress his bosses. That’s his window. So in that span, he basically publicly executed (not literally) a sales rep in front of 200 people at a kick-off to 2018 event. He put all these metrics in place. Everyone was scrambling. Now, I just looked on LinkedIn and he’s not in that role anymore, so it was a short window. He did what he could.

This gets trickier with the general company executive thought process, too. At that same company, we got a new CMO with all these promises, plans, strategies, and ideas. He left in 10.5 months for a better job with more stock options. So, he had windows of career achievement, and he wanted to shut one window and open a bigger one, likely with pressure from wife, kids, and desire to travel, etc.

People maximize their windows at the individual (or familial) level. But because of people chasing their windows, it’s much harder to make sustainable change and activism stick.

Thoughts?