“Whatever you think rigor looks like, you should go up a few notches.” Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Academy
“Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.” Dean Koontz, NYT best-selling author
One of my favorite lines is “don’t believe what you think.” We can have a lot of vigor for a particular idea or belief independent of the amount of rigor we invest to substantiate the idea.
I am definitely guilty as charged on this count. I remember confidently telling a fellow subway rider in NYC some directions to a desired location that turned out to be entirely wrong. Someone listening to my bold, but bad, directions said to me, in classical New York style: “You gave those directions with such confidence even though you didn’t know what you were talking about.” Yup. Unfortunately, that was not an isolated incident for me. 
Over time, I have learned that I need to balance my vigor with a little more rigor, but my son-in-law still can’t believe that I would buy a car, or choose a restaurant, or go on a vacation without doing exhaustive research. He is a rigorous AND vigorous dude. He’s also a head and neck surgeon, so his patients are glad he is as rigorous as he is. While my rigor for restaurant choice probably won’t improve, I will hopefully become more rigorous on matters that seem more important to me.
In the 1970’s, I was among a group of folks on the leading edge of the wellness movement. I wrote about this experience in a previous post. The wellness program I led was sponsored by a major hospital system in Arizona. I was lucky enough to have the expertise of physicians and scientists to ensure all of our programs were supported by solid medical evidence. I learned first-hand the importance of rigor in research. Fast forward 50 years and many people now learn about wellness from Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop which has come under criticism for marketing products and treatments that are based on pseudoscience, lack efficacy, and are recognized by the medical community as harmful. Gwyneth Paltrow and other celebrities often use their star power to market wellness solutions from coffee enemas to wild diets. I’ve always been gobsmacked by the hubris of celebrities to pose as experts when they have no expertise to back it up. Lots of vigor, but little rigor.
A few years ago I wrote a post on factivists. The idea was that, while I applauded efforts to change dysfunctional systems, activists needed to make sure that their proposals were factually based. In the post, I cited Stephen Pinker, the Harvard professor, cognitive psychologist and public intellectual, who wrote Enlightenment Now. In his book, Pinker examines the ways in which the Enlightenment ideals of science and reason have given us cause for optimism. Pinker challenges us to be neither too pessimistic or pollyannaish. He assembles an arsenal of numbers to attack a host of enemies: religion, conservatism, nationalism, tribalism, and populism – all of which can be characterized as enthusiastically vigorous but not particularly rigorous. Pinker credits the Enlightenment not only with crushing superstition, but also improving life expectancy, the world economy, and income levels while reducing infant and maternal mortality, death from famine, and extreme poverty. It seems to me that the world could benefit from a return to more enlightened rigor – myself included.
It used to be that the vast majority of the population trusted the integrity of American institutions, i.e. their commitment to rigor, truth and justice. That majority has now eroded to less than 10%. Why is that? In my mind, a major cause has been the vigorous promotion of disinformation with no basis in rigorous research. It’s a combination of baseless accusations, egregious lies, alternate facts, and fraudulent allegations. As Dean Koontz said, “Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.” Vigor needs to be supported by rigor.
One of my favorite experiences is to volunteer at the Maple Bay garden just outside my town of Elk Rapids, Michigan. The Maple Bay Garden is not only a showcase for the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy, a national model for collaborative conservation, but also a source of food for people who can’t afford high quality, organic vegetables. We give away over 4,000 pounds of fresh food every year to Food Rescue. The Garden is fully managed by a group of over 20 vigorous volunteers who faithfully come to the garden twice per week to plow, plant, weed, harvest, and package the produce. It is also led by a Master Agronomist and a Master Gardener who insist on the highest standards. Heeding the plea of Eva Moskowitz in the opening quote, they have raised the bar on rigor several notches. This community of volunteers is the best example I have ever seen of demonstrating both rigor and vigor in everything they do. And it is all done in the spirit of service and love. This community is not religious. It is not tribal. It is not exclusive. Indeed, it consists of people from a variety of political persuasions and religious beliefs. AND, It is profoundly effective. If you want to experience the benefits of rigor and vigor, come to Maple Bay Garden and dig in the dirt with us.
Somehow, the model established at Maple Bay Garden needs to be applied to climate change, domestic policy and foreign relations – a healthy combination of rigor and vigor independent of politics and religion. If I had to choose just one, I would definitely vote for rigor but both are needed for sustainable change. Vigor without rigor is simply hype without hope. Rigor without vigor is wasted effort. In our hyper polarized and politicized environment, vigor seems to be winning out over rigor.
To me, Joe Biden is a good example of relentless rigor. He may be lacking in vigor, but he has more than compensated with the rigor he has demonstrated in discharging his duties. He has hired seasoned, substantive and skilled civil servants to run our institutions. He has addressed climate change through the Inflation Reduction Act. He has confronted the supply chain issues with China through the CHIPS Act. He has tapped into his global network established over five decades to systematically re-build international coalitions to combat Russian aggression. And he has re-invigorated the economy by adding jobs and bringing down inflation. While I have concerns about his diminishing vigor over the next four years, I trust that he will empower vigorous AND rigorous people to deal with the ever-growing challenges we are facing. Hopefully, all of the effort invested in the last four years won’t be wasted by a change in administration.
More importantly, I wish we would quit dividing people by educated and non-educated, by elitists and non-elitists, by urban and rural and by class, race, gender and ethnicity. Wouldn’t it be more productive to focus on the amount of rigor and vigor a person brings to a job than to focus on the rhetoric he or she espouses?
So I’m hoping that we can step up the rigor we bring to the challenges we face by a few more notches. I also hope that we can tone down the vigor with which we spew stupidity. Finally, I hope we can quit digging up dirt to bring people down and start digging dirt together to lift people up. May it be so.
Also published on Medium.
Love, love, love your penultimate sentence!
Another rigorous and vigorous blog posting Rick! Love it!
[…] required to be a great leader. I would much prefer substance and thoroughness as discussed in my last post. I would hope we would apply these common criteria for great leadership to our current and future, […]