For several years I’ve trapped pigs on my land–not something I ever imagined myself doing. I made the trap, taught myself how to process them, the whole arc. It’s been fascinating.
For those unfamiliar with Hawaii, feral pigs are a serious problem. They destroy gardens, damage native ecosystems, root under fences, and create endless additional work for anyone trying to maintain land that is always in a growing season. And wherever they root you need to bring in more fill to repair the damage, as if they’re eating half of the dirt they dig up.
Last week, I caught a group of eight I’d been working on for two months, because when I caught them before with their parents, they were the size of large cats and escaped. Very cute, but that’s how you get what are called “educated pigs,” so it took a lot of time, piglet proofing my trap, and careful baiting to coax them back in.
I’ve developed an enormous appreciation for the domain of hunting, trapping, and meat processing when it’s done in non-factory settings. This time, my freezers were full, so I looked for people to give them to, which is not unusual here. I posted about it in a neighborhood WhatsApp group of 36 people, including a video of the live capture.
The original subject was actual pigs: large mammals that physically damage property, have no natural predators in Hawaii, and are considered invasive here and in much of the American south where they are a serious threat to farmers’ ability to succeed.
Within a few messages, however, the conversation transformed into something else entirely. Some people engaged with me in appropriate ways, offering to pay me to butcher one for them, for example, but this message was a heavy weight in the thread (these are all real, unedited quotes):
Aloha beautiful family,
I do eat meat occasionally.
My heartfelt suggestion is that we all try not to take more than we truly need. When we take in excess, nature often responds in mysterious ways, and imbalance can find its way into our communities.
May we live with gratitude, respect, and harmony with the natural world around us. 🌺
Then another neighbor wrote me directly:
A lot of the folks on our neighborhood chat are Amma devotees and vegetarian for animal Love reasons, so please keep the live trap videos off that thread 🙏🏽💛
Then that same neighbor posted in the group thread:
Aloha beautiful ohana. In awareness of everyone’s different perspectives, and our shared interconnectedness and deep love for our earth, we ask that offers of animal sacrifice and the gift of their flesh be kept to text only (without videos)…and that the offering is shared in a respectful and reverent way. Appreciation for everyone tending to the neighborhood, the land, and all our allies in a good way. 🙏🏽💗
What struck me was that nobody engaged the issue I was trying to solve: how to help with a growing invasive pig population. The conversation quickly shifted toward values, symbolism, and people’s relationship with the issue rather than the issue.
I was stunned, laughing sometimes, then angry and just bewildered that this was actually happening. Nobody directly addressed the issue with which I was immediately concerned. At best, there was a bacon joke, someone said they saw these pigs on their land, and other superfluous comments.
At worst, the conversation became about the participants, their values, identities, moral positioning, and their relationship with nature itself. The pig problem itself vanished from the conversation.
This is a surprisingly common organizational failure mode. Have you seen this?
A salesperson says, “Customers are leaving because onboarding is broken.” The discussion becomes, “That feedback feels negative.”
A manager says, “This employee is underperforming.” The discussion becomes, “That language feels judgmental.”
An executive says, “Our strategy isn’t working.” The discussion becomes, “People don’t feel included in this conversation.”
Notice the pattern? The original object disappears and the conversation becomes about people’s experiences of the object.
Now, before anyone misunderstands, subjective experience matters: feelings and reactions matter. What does not work is confusing those things with reality itself.
One of the most important distinctions in leadership is the distinction between object-level reality and subjective reality. Object-level reality is the thing being discussed: customer churn, employee performance, financial results, and definitely invasive pigs.
Subjective reality is people’s experience of those things: fear, offense, anxiety, concern, compassion, discomfort, etc. Healthy organizations can hold both simultaneously in the right places at the right times.
Unhealthy organizations gradually allow subjective reality to redefine objective reality. This increasingly happens in our society. This tendency extends well beyond organizations. Many institutions struggle to distinguish between an experience and the thing being experienced. Emotional impact becomes evidence, discomfort becomes disproof, and concern becomes causation. The old logical fallacy known as “Appeal to Emotion” has, in many ways, become culturally normalized.
The result is subtle but important. Reality becomes increasingly negotiated rather than investigated. Instead of asking, “What is true?” groups begin by asking, “How do people feel about it?” Feelings matter, but they are not a substitute for inquiry. When they become one, reality itself is obfuscated beneath interpretations of reality.
Someone can be genuinely distressed by a pig trap video. That experience is real. What does not follow is that the pig problem ceases to exist. It also doesn’t necessarily mean that the video is objectively distressing and needs to be eliminated.
Someone can feel hurt by performance feedback. That experience is real. What does not follow is that the performance problem ceases to exist. The organizational failure occurs when the distinction collapses. The moment we move from: “This person is having an experience” to “Therefore reality must be described differently,” truth is distorted and we’re no longer participating in reality. That creates problems, inevitably, because the problems that need solving are in the reality that was departed.
This is why you cannot solve a problem whose nature you don’t understand. You only can treat the symptoms. I see this every week: people want to solve their problems without getting more intimate with reality, where the lack of engagement with reality is what caused the problem in the first place.
I did eventually receive a private message from one of my neighbors. Only one person thanked me:
Aloha, I just caught up to the messages on the thread and wanted to say we are super appreciative of you for trapping the pigs and helping us all out…People are just out of touch sometimes, so I just wanted you to know we all super appreciate you. I don’t eat pork but I hope it got taken and is being appreciated by whoever got it.
This is a person who can hold both objective and subjective reality without confusing them. This message helped me realize what bothered me. I was annoyed because nobody seemed interested in the pigs (the objective reality). The object had disappeared.
Leadership often requires protecting the object when feelings are strong, because organizations lose their ability to function when they can no longer distinguish between reality and reactions to reality. When facts and interpretations of facts blend, problem solving is crippled.
The goal is not to suppress subjective experience or somehow elevate facts above people. The goal is to maintain the distinction between them, by making a well-defined “And.”
Reality exists and people experience reality. Both matter, but confusing them is where dysfunction begins; and fascinatingly, the pigs remain completely uninterested in our values, identities, spiritual positions, or emotional reactions. Our subjective reality doesn’t seem to impact them at all, but there might be someone on that thread who thinks prayer, affirmations, or meditation could work better than my trap.
Objective reality: the thing.
Subjective reality: the experience of the thing.
Dysfunction: confusing the two.
Meanwhile, I’m already working on a second group of larger pigs, but since I’ve learned from this experience, I’ve already composed a more community-friendly message to send out after I catch them:
Aloha beautiful family 🌺🙏🏽💛
Five sacred beings have entered a temporary containment sanctuary on their journey toward becoming a gift of nourishment for the community. If anyone feels called to participate in receiving this offering in a respectful and reverent way, please reach out privately. Let us honor their transition with gratitude and deep interconnectedness. 🐷✨💗🌈
An earlier version of me would for sure send this to punish the people for their folly. The current version of me turns it into an inquiry. My material has to come from somewhere, after all.
Perhaps a future version of me won’t be bothered by it all, but I wasn’t merely observing this dynamic. I participated in it. My anger, disappointment, and feeling invisible were also subjective realities. The distinction I am pointing to applies to me as well: I honor my feelings were real, but I won’t clutter the organizational communication with reactions that don’t help the stated object (and won’t change anyone’s mind); otherwise, I become that which I criticize and leak my self-authority rather than augment it.
That’s one of the ways a group stays focused and gets things done without falling into the trap of mistaking subject for object.
Protect the bacon, got it. My personal first subjective reaction, was why be bothered (with community reaction). A possible future version of yourself, you acknowledged, might not. Then I suppose, engagement and participation with community, themselves, could be bacon. And bacon is good. So make the distinction, I tell myself. Thank you.