While both a harp and sword are neutral, we have our pre-existing thoughts about both. We associate peace and winged angels playing silky melodies on top of clouds with harps. With swords, we may immediately think of exhausted soldiers wielding bloodied blades in the battlefield of war.
But what are their user’s intentions and desired effects of each? If I were to use a harp to play a subliminal melody that would cause a listener to commit murder, well, then, my intentions would be awful. However, if I used a sword as a letter opener (no, it’s not overkill at all) to open a check for a million dollars and donated it all to charity, then it’s quite a lovely letter opener, isn’t it?
George R.R. Martin’s quote suggests that everything should be questioned – especially if it seems to be “good” because that’s often where the most deceit lives. When I think of storylines in movies that create the most interesting plots, I think of how characters are motivated and how they end up doing what they do. And it’s the same with people. You can scare someone into doing something you want them to do, by holding a sword over their head. They will be motivated to do what you ask out of fear.
But with a harp, you can present the message as something beautiful and good. And with that message you can lull a person to do your bidding by making them believe what you want them to do is their idea. Or you can make something seem so beautiful or too good to be true, that people want to believe it. And they do.
Case in point – Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. In the beginning, she and her company were considered untouchably brilliant with their development of the Edison blood-testing device. How could anyone not believe in this young Stanford dropout’s brilliance? How could anyone question a woman in the male-dominated worlds of STEM and Silicon Valley start-ups? How could anyone want to discount the idea of democratizing blood testing for billions of people? It was a story too good to be true.
Because it was. The closer that journalist John Carreyrou and employee Tyler Shultz got to the core, the more that they realized that this harp was dangerous as a sword – if not more so. Since the Edisons allegedly didn’t work with 100% accuracy, this gross ineptitude and fraud not only put would be testers’ lives at risk with misinformation, but they threatened to endanger many more.
While Elizabeth may have initially had world-saving intentions in the beginning, such unconscionable inaccuracies seemed to reveal her motives as being more corrupt than beneficent.
While I am one who tends to see good until something is proven bad, there is value in questioning things – especially things that seem too good to be true. Remember, not all things are 100% good and not all things are 100% bad. Questioning a person’s intentions and the potential consequences of a business deal, relationship, object, entity, or series of actions gives you a clearer and richer view of what is really at play. Learning how to do this well is a necessary part of growth and one that can save lots of heartache down the road.
