100% responsible for my life." And what I do in that chapter is I raise this psychological phenomenon called locus of control. 50 years ago, a psychologist named Julian Rotter determined that human beings lie on the spectrum of locus of control.
On the other hand, if you're totally healthy, you're trying to decide which vitamin to take or whether to take a prophylactic statin, the locus of control is much more in the hands of the individual and the family. So the role of the doctor will change.
All of them, apparently. the locus of identity.
But when you get to leadership the locus of control shifts, doesn't it? The locus of control shifts to everybody else. It's no longer up to you, is it?
But what we're starting to see now is we may be reaching the limit of what can be done if we don't begin to address the locust of violence who can come in and just sweep the benefits of all that effort away. The thing you'll notice about the locust as well, is that not only do the locust descend and destroy the fruit of the farmer, but the farmer
agency is part of what makes Thought A feel like it generates Thought B. Solitary locusts, and in academic jargon, they were considered gregarious if they swarmed.
agency is part of what makes Thought A feel like it generates Thought B. The locust changes to the so-called swarming locust.
rights and integration but there was time for a quick visit to the vacant lot the sidewalk was still cooled beneath the black locust trees the noise that had wakened her sounded a lot louder out here it grew and grew the closer she got to the curses and then she saw the
was actually a professor a professor of philosophy and math in the local university his name was Professor antennas locust locust came to power promising to do things differently and change things he took over the sprawling capital promising to bring new ideas now the first thing he did when he took power in Bogota to try to deal with the
So our guest today has won a Hugo Award, he's won a Nebula award, he's won the John Campbell Memorial Award, he's won the Locus Award, he's won the World Fantasy Award. Some of those awards more than once.
All of them, apparently. Not the locus of consciousness, but the locus of identity.
You know an average person in Google and it may be even higher, answers email 57 times a day; checks email 57 times a day. That's 57 times that you're taking your attention from this locus that it has to something else. So, what's the cost? Well, we know that in a car, when you split your attention between talking on the phone and driving the car, which, by the way, ought to be a reasonably easy multitask by any normal, because it's not two cognitive pieces.
Descartes that there is inside each one of us a thing that thinks and feels and decides that is the locus of consciousness it is an old idea that each of us is identical to that thing
And what it has done, then, is unleash this epidemic of violence against the poor. And in "The Locust Effect," this is really what we're trying to bring to the surface. Because if I say the word global poverty and if you try to bring sort of images to mind, what comes to mind?
So this is what it looks like in the developing world when you have this complete collapse of law enforcement. And then what "The Locust Effect" tries to do is then tell the story of the violence that this collapse has unleashed for the poorest in the world. And we go to four categories of violence against the poor.
agency is part of what makes Thought A feel like it generates Thought B. And solitary locusts are vegetarian.
50 years ago, a psychologist named Julian Rotter determined that human beings lie on the spectrum of locus of control. On one end is an external locus of control, which is the world happens to me. Circumstances shape me. There's very little I can do to affect my situation.
I get knocked down, I bounce right back up. There is a strong sense of internal locus of control. I'm not a victim.
So you're in control for technical expertise and management. But when you get to leadership the locus of control shifts, doesn't it? The locus of control shifts to everybody else.
And so this is an effort through "The Locust Effect" to begin to open our eyes to this epidemic. We're calling it "The Locust Effect." It comes from these stories from history that are very powerful when you've got these poor farmers who were sort of starting to scrape their way out of poverty, and all of their work and ambition is in their crops, right?
the locust of violence who can come in and just sweep the benefits of all that effort away. The thing you'll notice about the locust as well, is that not only do the locust descend and destroy the fruit of the farmer, but the farmer is not going to stop the locust.
The thing you'll notice about the locust as well, is that not only do the locust descend and destroy the fruit of the farmer, but the farmer is not going to stop the locust. Right? We have to actually start to do something differently.
Right? We have to actually start to do something differently. And so that's what "The Locust Effect" is trying to do is to begin to change the conversation about poverty to make sure that we're mainstreaming the problem of violence.
some characters and some themes that are at work. So about the flesh- eating locusts. I have proof. Here is General Alfred Sully's report to the Secretary of War in August of 1864 regarding
Circumstances shape me. There's very little I can do to affect my situation. And on the other end is people that have an internal locus of control, which is a belief about their circumstances, that there's always something I can do to affect my circumstances.
of life-- health, finances, career, education, you name it. And the problem is the default human belief is an external locus of control. The world happens to me.
Minsky and his colleague, Richard Bolt wrote that, "We are proposing to develop human-computer interfaces, on the one hand as sophisticated in conception as a cockpit, But it seems to be viewed as the locus of really great, big enterprise deployments, like if we used to get excited about
But that's just sort of transferring the locus of that absolute thing into something that is just presumed to be outside the universe.
that's going to be uh the future and the locus of uh computing into the future and one of the things that we observed
So they were like this swarm of feathered locusts.
that they would be able to get out of poverty. And this is why we're calling it "The Locust Effect," because one of the pictures we want people to have is just the way that over the millennia, these poor farm communities, who are trying to scrape their way out of poverty by all this farm work, in a single day would see the locusts descend
We know a great deal about providing food, and medicine, and education, and other basic needs, but what about the violence? And so this is an effort through "The Locust Effect" to begin to open our eyes to this epidemic. We're calling it "The Locust Effect." It comes from these stories from history that are very powerful when you've got these poor farmers who were sort of starting to scrape
And as I study leadership and I'm a student of leadership, it may be the one variable that I would point to as most determinative of success. And we now have 50 years of research that people with an internal locus of control have vastly superior outcomes in almost every dimension of life-- health, finances, career, education, you name it.
So I think we need to narrow it even more and find the locus of free will in a certain kind of decision
is like this-- like, the locus of free will of what we want is when I go, oh.
And then also, focusing on your locus of control can be helpful, and not on things outside your control.
on our maps, but the locus of economic activity in most of the world's emerging economies are these cities and special economic zones that don't even
So gender is one of the places that this fundamental argument over where the locus of control should be is playing out.
So there's lots of literature in psychology on what's called locus of control.
And unfortunately a lot of people are in leadership roles, but they don't have the ability to influence. Yep. So what happens is the locus of control fundamentally shifts. So what's the technical expertise about?
of Germany has come out and defined the international investing community as locusts, eating all day, they find their way.
And so it takes something for us to be traveling into that subterranean world to see what that violence looks like. And this is what we try to do in the opening chapters of "The Locust Effect" is take you with a common poor person in the developing world to see what this violence is like.
But if you lived in the San Francisco Bay Area 120 years ago, what kind of law enforcement would you be experiencing? And so we would love it if you would go to the locusteffect.com/petition, and just joined a petition there.
And they see them growing and they offer great promise. And then one day, the locust just descend. And honestly, in a matter of hours, they will just wipe out years of work.
And so they now actually would feel quite threatened if justice systems actually started working in the way that they should. So that's the diagnosis that we're trying to make here in "The Locust Effect," but then we try to make a turn towards hope. And that is to ask, OK great, this is totally depressing, massive violence, grotesque.
agency is part of what makes Thought A feel like it generates Thought B. In the '20s there was thought that there were two types of locusts.
agency is part of what makes Thought A feel like it generates Thought B. So you go back, you think about the locust, you think on this.
The nightmare that if any of this should reveal the secrets of locusts swarming, of bees navigating or of ants foraging, the seekers will
specialized sense, withdrawn from the social world insofar as it's the locus of status, competition, who's in with who, it's the world where your focus is on how you're evaluated, where you fit in in a
This is a SNP where we-- humans all used to have TT at this one particular locus spot on the chromosome.