(em)Power

There have been times, I confess, when I vainly feared that I was the only person who saw it - the misunderstanding, misappropriation and misapplication of power - but then reassurance and a vestigial hope has been granted by such as a letter to a popular magazine or a posting on a blog.

In Back Chat (Good Weekend letters to the editor, 27 October 2018), Jane Hosking of Tinonee, NSW wrote:

'Someone has finally called out what I call the "MBA curse"… the main problem in the working world today. People are employed solely because they have management training, based on an erroneous belief that if you are a trained manager, you can manage anything.'

Whilst on avc.com (13 February 2012), a guest post by well-known 'tech' blogger Joel Spolsky (edited for some brevity) observed:

'Most management is of the “command and control” variety. The CEO makes a decision, and tells his lieutenants. They convey this important decision to the teams, who execute on the CEO’s decision. It’s top-down management. All authority and power and decisions flow from the top. How could it work any other way? Turns out, it’s positively de-motivating to work for a company where your job is just to shut up and take orders. Thus, the upside-down pyramid. Stop thinking of the management team at the top of the organization. The “management team” isn’t the “decision making” team. It’s a support function. You may want to call them administration instead of management, which will keep them from getting too big for their britches.

Administrators aren’t supposed to make the hard decisions. They don’t know enough. Administrators exist to move the furniture around so that the people at the top of the tree can make the hard decisions. You don’t build a [business] with one big gigantic brain on the top, and a bunch of lesser brains obeying orders down below. You try to get everyone to have a gigantic brain in their area, and you provide a minimum amount of administrative support to keep them humming along. Attempting to see management as the ultimate decision makers demotivates the smart people in the organization who, without the authority to do what they know is right, will grow frustrated and leave. And if this happens, you won’t notice it, but you’ll be left with a bunch of yes-men, who don’t particularly care (or know) how things should work, and the company will only have one brain - the CEO’s.

It is not, as it turns out, necessary to be a micromanaging psychopath with narcissistic personality disorder (or even to pretend to be one) if you just hire smart people and give them real authority. That doesn’t mean lowering your standards. It doesn’t mean letting people do bad work. It means hiring smart people who get things done - and then getting the hell out of the way.'

What's most strange about both the above quoted 'revelations' is that we see them as such - new insights upon perplexing dilemmas - when in truth the knowledge has been with us for centuries if we only looked. Dreams of singular glory have repeatedly blinded many among us to the wisdom of our forebears.

From the east, verse sixty-six of the Tao Te Ching (trans. Jonathan Star), the foundation text of Daoist philosophy reads:

'Why do the hundred rivers

turn and rush toward the sea?

Because it naturally stays below them

He who wishes to rule over the people

must speak as if below them

He who wishes to lead the people

must walk as if behind them

So the Sage rules over the people

but he does not weigh them down

He leads the people

but does not block their way

The Sage stays low

so the world never tires of exalting him

He remains a servant

so the world never tires of making him its king'

And from the west, among the opening stanzas of Beowulf (trans. Seamus Heaney), one of the foundation works of poetry in English, we find:

'Beow's name was known through the north.

And a young prince must be prudent like that,

giving freely while his father lives

so that afterwards in age when fighting starts

steadfast companions will stand by him

and hold the line. Behaviour that's admired

is the path to power among people everywhere.'

Age-old advice indeed, yet here I am, certainly with no delusions of new-found wisdom or claims of original insight but none-the-less a sense of obligation, to raise popular awareness once more to the truth as to wherein our power actually lies.

Because in reality, as all these examples illuminate, if anything has more potential than power it is empowerment. Power over others requires the investment of energy to protect that power, however the empowering of others creates a unified body of equally enabled contributors who in combination have a strength far greater than any individual and which is not threatened by usurpation - all its energy investment is productive and not wasted upon protective measures.

But we're never going to see broadscale realisation of this simple truth, or better still, action to adopt its message as a standard modus, unless we start to teach it to our young from the earliest possible opportunity. As we all know, there is no better lesson than actual practice. It is pointless within an MBA course to preach bottom-up management within a top-down educational model. And tertiary level institutions are way too late to be commencing such an endeavour anyway. This is an undertaking that needs to be addressed from the first day of schooling.

However our current education model was 'Designed during the Industrial Revolution', as has been frequently observed in the past and restated most recently in Sharon Bradley's article Lessons in Learning (Good Weekend, 3 November 2018), 'It smacks of factory-process management: ringing bells tell students when to clock on and off and mark the times at which they must move from one stage of their manufacture to the next - 45 minutes of Algebra 1 in this room, 45 minutes of William Blake in that one; the periodic table over here; logarithms over there. Even the batch size, the class itself is determined not by the most obvious thing that a group of students might have in common, their ability, but by their own dates of manufacture - their birthdays … After 13 years of formal education, the batch has reached the end of the assembly line and, regardless of whether it has been well fabricated or not, is despatched into the outside world.'

Little wonder then that 'Australia's academic performance has gone into sharp decline.' She adds, 'Disengagement lies at the heart of the rot' with students who 'feel like a cog in a machine' reporting 'a poor sense of autonomy'. This is most certainly not empowerment. This is not how best we can prepare our young to be engaged and enthusiastic contributors to, and members of, a dynamic, supportive and genuinely powerful and empowered society and culture.

Thankfully, moves are afoot to at least attempt the beginnings of change within our schools but change of this sort, within a bureaucracy of such scale, is notoriously glacial. This is not however a task which should be left to our schools alone. This is a global challenge - but which can and should be tackled at every scale and at every opportunity. It is the undertaking for which the phrase 'think global, act local' may best have been coined.

Throughout history, the most powerful developments in human achievement and potential have been those that empowered the most people. Power over others, conquest, has consistently resulted in conflict; Empowering of others repeatedly engenders progress, leading to prosperity. If we don't, as a species, learn and learn quickly to work collaboratively and cooperatively - a globally unified and empowered force seeking betterment for all - we are doomed through our own vainglorious pursuits and deliberate ignorance to languish and flounder, taking down with us a broad diversity of dynamic environments and a veritable wealth of living species alongside whom we evolved over millennia past.

We need to decide now whether what we truly desire is the emptiness of power or the extraordinary richness of empowerment because, as Yuval Noah Harari concludes in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 'We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles - but nobody knows where we're going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with that all power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are constantly wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.

Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?'

Submission for New Philosopher Writers' Award XXI: Power

Twenty One

A brief speech I read at my nephew's surprise 21st birthday party.

Hey everyone, I've been asked to add a few words today from what I think is supposed to be the perspective of a sort of 'mentor' figure in his life and I figure I can either relate some witty and embarrassing stories from times past - but that's maybe what others will be doing? - or I can offer some advice going forward - some 'words of wisdom' perhaps? My problem with that is there's this great line in one of my favourite books which states that whilst knowledge can be communicated, wisdom can't - and that the wisdom a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish. But what the hell - why let that stop me? - it never has before! So on the wild assertion that I might just possibly be wise and if so, at the very real risk therefore of simply sounding foolish - here's a few things I have come to accept. My apologies in advance if it's all way too serious for a party!

First, a little perspective - On the scale of universal time and space, our entire existence is pretty much irrelevant and even on a global scale we humans don't fare much better - each just one among 7.5 billion. In fact the single most significant reason we are all even here today is little more than our insanely good fortune to be born into a time and a culture of extraordinary wealth and health. So don't get trapped in some stupid sense of entitlement when in reality it's mostly just dumb luck.

Second, some objectivity - Don't get too caught up in the modern obsession with the self. None of us exist in isolation. Take a step back. Try to see yourself as others do and work out who the best possible 'you' could be and then be that person with honesty and integrity and persistence to all the other people who are in your life - family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, lovers, partners, children, and yeah, even strangers - that's a great way to truly be a person of significance and to live the most rewarding of lives.

Third, and (you'll be happy to hear) lastly, the importance of flexibility - The only thing we can ever know with absolute certainty about the future is that it will be different; so make plans but expect to let them change; take appropriate risks but learn from your mistakes; and most importantly, every undertaking you will ever make in your life begins - and ends - with where you are at that moment, so use every moment as you think best at that time and your journey through life will be rich with experience. Life isn't a dress rehearsal mate - enjoy your 21st birthday and all the days that follow - 'cause you only get 'em once!

Happy 21st birthday - I love you - look after yourself eh!

Beyond the Ends of the Rainbow

Life is just one damn thing after another*. This sentiment has been attributed to many people, though this exact rendering was published in The Philistine in 1909. It is of course equally applicable now, over one hundred years since that printing and indeed always had been up until that point in history. It is both very funny and very truthful - the former because of the latter - though I can’t help but feel that our amusement leads us to dismiss its potential lessons without further examination.

Looking a little closer, a good many of those damn things are situations or occurrences that demand a response, an action and frequently therefore - a choice. Which action do I take? Which choice do I make? More often than not, it seems our default position is to perceive our numerous choices to fall into a decision between 'this' or 'that'. Hunt or scavenge, fight or flee, the red or the blue pill? A recent meme born of an advertisement for packaged Mexican foods asked with incredulity 'Porque no los dos!?' - Why not have both!? but despite its apparent generosity, this suggestion still accepts the notion of only two possible components to our experience, even if they are both to be consumed in equal measure.

Importantly, this dualist approach to life extends well beyond choice-making. It is also perhaps our default position with respect to our perceptions and descriptions. As a species we are most comfortable when we feel we 'understand' a thing but unfortunately the extent of our understanding seldom surpasses the limits of naming and categorising. We feel that by the simple exercise of attributing a name to something or someone and metaphorically placing them into this or that box, or category, we have somehow achieved a modicum of understanding and indeed, control. At the most fundamental, most visceral, level this is evidenced by our eagerness to class all our fellow beings as 'one of us' or 'one of them' - the 'other' that we fear so much, due almost entirely to the simple fact that, truthfully, we know so little about them. Sadly however, having decided they are the other, we feel no obligation to understand them any further. Fear, contempt, hatred, ridicule - all need no further examination to be applied or illumination to be gained of anyone not in our elite, select few - not 'our kind'.

So how to see beyond this dilemma? How to step outside this lazy 'black' or 'white' and perceive all the possible intermediate shades of grey? Or, better still, actually examine black and white also in far greater detail, revealing that they are respectively comprised of the total absorption or the complete reflectance of every possible hue of colour in the visible spectrum? In short, how do we turn away from the monochrome and start to see the complete rainbow of possibility?

In 1996 Brian Eno published A Year With Swollen Appendices, his 'Diary' for the previous year. In addition to its daily record of activities and thoughts, copies of communiques and asterisked marginalia, it contains a comprehensive collection of essays, lectures, short stories and musings - the swollen appendices of its title and almost a third of the volume's total bulk. Among them is a relatively short but gloriously insightful piece entitled Axis Thinking, to which I repeatedly find myself returning for its remarkable clarity and potential. Perhaps it is in part his very 'visual' approach that particularly appeals to my designers' mind, but certainly his proposed 'model' for structuring our perceptions, considerations and communications has potential benefits well beyond simple descriptive use.

We are all familiar with scales of preference - for example, rating a product, service, desire from one to ten. This is an axis with two 'extremes' and a range of potential 'mixes' between them. This has a simple, horizontal, linear dimension. If we look at food as an example - it is after all a universal essential and relatively non-confrontational - we might have a linear preference scale for mild to spicy. We could all place ourselves at some point along such a scale. If we then wish to also describe our preference for heavy and rich or light and crisp foods we could add a vertical axis, thereby creating a two-dimensional 'graph' upon which to place our delight in a laksa, rich with chilli and coconut cream or a Thai beef salad, bright, fresh and crisp with just a tang of spice. Anyone with a different palate still has a place on the page, just perhaps not exactly the same location as ourselves. With each additional 'quality' we wish to measure - say meat-eating or vegetarian - we add a new axis, rapidly moving away from the possibility of a simple two-dimensional graph into a three-dimensional 'cartesian' space with x, y & z axes and then beyond that again into richly connected 'multi-axial' models. I find this easiest to imagine by picturing my personal preferences as a node - say a small rubber ball - pierced successively by a number of long skewers - each representing an axis between two possible alternatives. Some skewers will perhaps be equally protruding on both sides of the ball as I have a similar liking for both mild and spicy foods, but were I vegan, then obviously I'd be near the extreme end of that particular skewer, or axis.

If we now picture our small ball, our node, 'me', within a vast and complex multi-dimensional 'field' of cultural and personal dietary axes of preference, we can see that in fact everyone else on the planet similarly occupies a position within this rich arena of culinary possibility. Some might lie very close to ourselves, whilst other inhabit regions at the extremes of this potentially endless realm - enjoying offal, molecular gastronomy, paleo diets or such. Everyone is here. They are perhaps none of them precisely the same as me, yet they are all represented and equally so. This is no longer a world picture in which we can say it's 'us' or 'them' - two polar extremes - rather, we are all unique yet all united in our common occupation of this rich cosmos of variability. This is the magic of Axis Thinking - with all its potential complexity, it brings us all together to occupy the same 'universe' of possibility. No trait, no desire, no predilection, no genetic disposition, no race, no culture, no gender, no sexuality, no thing, nothing and no-one is excluded. We are all united in our occupation of this field of seemingly infinite possibilities. Plus we are all equally valuable, and potentially valued, for the power that our very diversity brings - someone occupies every conceivable position, everyone is uniquely qualified for their particular location.

Of course, as Eno points out, we must also recognise that the very axes themselves are not of finite length with fixed polar extremes. Much as the rainbow we see in the sky is representative of only a tiny, visible light, portion of the full extent of the electro-magnetic spectrum - stretching from the red end through increasingly long microwave and radio wavelengths, and at the violet end into the ever-decreasing wavelengths of ultraviolet, x-rays and gamma rays - so any and indeed all axes within our model of understanding are merely 'limited' in extent within any given moment by the extremes we understand or proscribe. As our cultures, knowledge and acceptance morph over time, so the 'occupied' portion of any axis may shrink, expand or simply slide along its continuum. Only after chillies were carried from the Americas in the fifteenth century did the European dietary axis expand into greater extremes of spiciness and only with more liberal attitudes slowly won after the decline of the stranglehold of religious doctrines did the duality of heterosexual or homosexual desire both expand and increase in complexity to include LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual and more). Plus, we need to recognise that wholly new axes may at times appear - virtual sexual encounters employing digital avatars only became possible with the advent of the internet. Of course, as is explored magnificently in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, time, politics, fear and circumstance could easily reverse these particular trends and attempt to enforce an axis comprised of the singularity of conformist heterosexual behaviour - though an axis comprising a singular point is of course a logical impossibility. As has frequently been observed, the only constant is change, and change is undeniably inevitable given the unstoppable march of time. My hope is only that perhaps with the benefit of tools to aid our understanding, such as Axis Thinking, we can ensure that our journey through time moves principally toward the betterment, rather than the detriment, of our lives and the lives of all others of the same or different species with whom we share this impossibly fragile speck of rock in the seemingly infinite expanse of the universe.

Submission for New Philosopher Writers' Award XIX: Life

*1909 December, The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, Edited by Elbert Hubbard, Volume 30, Number 1, (Untitled short item), Quote Page 32, Published by The Roycrofters, East Aurora, New York. (Google Books Full View)

Nothing Matters

As much as I believe we would all acknowledge the perhaps undue significance, within many global cultures, that is given to the individual possession of 'stuff' or 'things' - I feel that at times our singular pursuit of acquisition blinds us to an equally important recognition of the balancing role of empty space - an at least partial absence of material belongings in our homes and lives. Our vision is obscured by the wealth of paraphernalia with which we surround ourselves, rendering us blind to the true value of 'no stuff' or 'no things' - nothing. Because nothing, actually, matters.

I was saddened recently to read of the death of yet another of the creative souls whose works were influential in the early stages of my 'discovery' of a personal philosophy and character - my 'self'. Ursula K. Le Guin's writings, whilst sometimes dismissed - by the convenient human habit of 'labelling' or 'categorising' - as being nothing more than generic works of science fiction or children's literature, are in fact extraordinary examinations of the human condition and, as her obituary in the Washington Post noted, 'grappled with issues of gender inequality, racism and environmental destruction'.

Favourite and formative works for me are her Earthsea series - at one point considered a trilogy but ultimately encompassing five novels and eight short stories - which I too originally enjoyed principally as mere fiction, yet which always resonated at some deeper level of understanding. An oft-quoted passage from book three The Farthest Shore has the Archmage Ged addressing his companion Arren, 'Try to choose carefully, Arren, when the great choices must be made. When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.'

Only many years later did I recognise the Daoist sentiment in this dialogue. Browsing the Philosophy section in a bookshop for an approachable rendition of the Tao Te Ching, I chanced upon 'An English Version by Ursula K. Le Guin'. Her verse 11, The Uses of Not, reads:

Thirty spokes

meet in the hub.

Where the wheel isn't

is where it's useful.

Hollowed out,

clay makes a pot.

Where the pot's not

is where it's useful.

Cut doors and windows

to make a room.

Where the room isn't,

there's room for you.

So the profit in what is

is in the use of what isn't.

Her footnote explains: 'One of the things I love about Lao Tzu is he is so funny. He's explaining a profound and difficult truth here, one of those counter-intuitive truths that, when the mind can accept them, suddenly double the size of the universe. He goes about it with this deadpan simplicity, talking about pots.'

Both of these extracts address the notion of absence - nothingness. The first, an absence of activity - the creation of a space to simply be. The second, an absence of matter - the creation of a volume which can be filled or inhabited - or not! In truth, both passages are ultimately alluding not simply to these absences - but equally to their opposites. Hence Ursula's comment about 'doubl[ing] the size of the universe.' The well recognised Daoist two-part Taiji diagram, commonly referred to as the Yin-Yang symbol, clearly illustrates this central Daoist precept of the 'balance of opposites'. Originally alluding to the shady and sunny sides of a hill - which of course are constantly in flux and become their opposite every day - the symbol reminds us, and invites us to accept, that all things are constantly changing yet perpetually in, or seeking, balance.

This duality is evident in all we do, all we know, all we experience, all we value. All our senses relish the equalising balance of the 'intangible' other: Gazing into an infinite night-time sky from a rooftop above the hubbub of a major city, or a broad ocean vista from a balcony within a wall of soaring Gold Coast residential towers; a three-bar rest after the cacophony of an orchestral overture, or the perfectly timed pause before the punchline delivered by an accomplished comedian; the deliberately bland or neutral palate cleanser between courses of an exotic degustation, or the deep intake of cool, clean air after escaping the suffocating atmosphere of a poorly ventilated - or worse and more commonly, over-scented - public toilet; the freedom of nakedness after a day's confinement in restrictive clothing, or the upturned and empty palm of a hand in a Yoga-class Padmasana (Lotus Position) after hours of tapping at the keyboard of our office computer. The pinnacle, perhaps, of this desire to experience a more complete, all-encompassing 'absence' is provided by the current trend for Isolation or Float Tanks which aim to restore 'balance' to a participant rattled by contemporary urban life through Stimulus/Sensory Deprivation.

We recognise the value of 'nothing' also in the visual arts, and not simply its significant compositional value. We also imbue it with monetary value by outlaying vast sums for works by such as Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman that could be said to be largely comprised of little more than broad expanses of a single flat colour. Indeed, in 2014 an untitled 'all-white' 1961 work by American conceptualist painter Robert Ryman fetched $15 million at Sotheby's, New York. Our willingness to confer cultural or even metaphysical value to 'nothing' is perhaps exemplified by the much anticipated Roden Crater project in Northern Arizona by light and space artist James Turrell, which promises visitors, among other experiences, an unprecedented and consciousness-expanding view of an uninterrupted expanse of pure blue sky.

We also frequently find advice to possess less - to discover and value 'absence' - in diverse quotations from esteemed authors: 'With more quality in our lives perhaps we would crave less [quantity].' from Kevin McCloud's 43 Principles of Home; 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.' From William Morris's 1880 lecture, The Beauty of Life; 'It would seem that perfection is attained not when no more can be added, but when no more can be removed.' from Antoine de Saint-Exupery's, Terres des Hommes (Published in English as Wind, Sand and Stars); and perhaps unsurprisingly from a Japanese observer, the ultimate in appreciation of the almost imperceptible 'If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty.' from Jun'Ichiro Tanizaki's, In Praise of Shadows.

But do we listen? It is currently very fashionable within our 'greed is good' consumerist mindset - seemingly undiminished since the 1980s despite repeated global financial 'warnings' - to dismiss the well-known designers' credo of 'less is more' as minimalist, modernist nonsense. We judge ourselves and our contemporaries almost solely on our apparent mutual abundance of assets. We fill our homes to bursting with belongings, collectibles and equipment; effects, goods and chattels. Then when there's little room to move, we place it all into store and fill the void once more with fresh acquisitions. But with every new purchase our environments become more thickly crowded with stuff whilst our attention is spread ever more thinly, with a lesser and lesser portion of our available emotional quotient to delight in its presence in our lives, plus a proportionally diminishing likelihood of ever encountering that oh-so ephemeral, yet oh-so longed for, moment of peace and solitude we physically, mentally and spiritually crave.

But by seeking to bask in admiration at our ostentatious display of wealth, we actually make ourselves the poorer - not just financially, but also poor of quality time, poor of physical space, poor of calm and serenity in our daily lives, when with just a slight inversion of our thinking, a little less haste to fill every nook and cranny with material clutter - and a great deal less monetary expenditure - we could discover the genuine richness of existence that we truly desire. Perhaps Matsuo Basho, the seventeenth-century itinerant Japanese poet expressed this sentiment most clearly in an essay he wrote in the year prior to his death, when he stated ' My solitude shall be my company, and my poverty my wealth.'

So less really is more - because it allows us to glimpse the richness that lies beyond immediate and distracting materiality. And nothing at all? Well nothing, as we've seen, truly matters.

Finalist for New Philosopher Writers' Award XVIII: Stuff