Stop the World – I want to get off

Yuval Harari famously wrote in 2016 “Homo Deus – a brief history of tomorrow” (the link gives you the full book) to which LRB devoted an extensive review 

Once upon a time, we accepted three score years and ten as our divinely allotted lifespan; we reckoned there wasn’t much we could do to prevent or counter epidemic disease; we looked on dearth and famine as bad hands dealt by fate or divine judgment; we considered war to be in the nature of things; and we believed that personal happiness was a matter of fortune.

Now, Harari says, these problems have all been reconfigured as managerial projects, subject to political will but not limited by the insufficiencies of our knowledge or technique. We have become the masters of our own fate – and ‘fate’ itself should be reconceived as an agenda for further research and intervention. That is what it means to refer to the world era in which we live as the Anthropocene: one biological species, Homo sapiens, has become a major agent in shaping the natural circumstances of its own existence. The gods once made sport of us; the future will ‘upgrade humans into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus’…… 

The current version of Homo sapiens will become surplus to economic and military requirements. War will be waged by drones and work will be done by robots: ‘Some economists predict that sooner or later, unenhanced humans will be completely useless.’ Algorithms embedded in silicon and metal will replace algorithms embedded in flesh, which, Harari reminds us, is what biology and computer science tell us is all we really are anyway….. 

Wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the ‘tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms’. Some of us will then be as gods: members of a new species, Homo deus, ‘a new elite of upgraded superhumans’ clever enough, and rich enough, to control for a time the knowledge that controls the rest of humankind, and to command the resources needed to transform themselves through intellectual tools and biologic prostheses. ‘In the long run, we are all dead,’ Keynes said. If some of the wilder ambitions of anti-ageing prophets are realised, the dictum will need to be reformulated: ‘In the long run, most of us will be dead.’… 

I remember reading the first 50 pages of “Homo Deus” and feeling that this and a couple of other reviews had told me all I needed to know about the book. I was eager to see what his ”21 Lessons for the 21st Century” (2018) held for me….Once I realised that it consists of a lot of op-eds and answers to his fan-club mail, I decided against reading it. A contrarian article and a "digested read" tend to confirm my prejudice....  

If you can’t be bothered to read these two books of his or a post of mine from last year which tried to give a sense of the basic argument, then you will perhaps find more exciting this hour-long discussion between Harari and Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist whose “The Righteous Mind” I enthused over a couple of years ago.

Haidt start the discussion by articulating a concern he feels about trends in social media, AI and the incredible rate at which the world is changing. It’s a really great discussion and I thoroughly recommend it. It certainly made me realise that I had been a bit unfair to Harari and should certainly persevere with his ”21 Lessons for the 21st Century” One of the reasons the video gripped me is because of the obvious respect the two men have for one another. It’s so great to see a serious discussion of ideas 

And if that does in fact grab you, then I would suggest you view a discussion between Harari and the author of another book I enthused about recently – Rutger Bregman’s Humankind – an optimistic history. Indeed I was so impressed with Bregman’s book that I did one of my famous tables summarising the various myths he exposed.

Other Assessments of Harari

A profile of Harari in The New Yorker revealed that a team of eight people supports him in his various speaking and writing endeavours. Doesn’t that risk “groupthink”???

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/24/homo-deus-by-yuval-noah-harari-review from the ever-thoughtful and challenging David Runciman..

https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/a-big-history-of-the-future/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/15/21-lessons-for-the-21st-century-by-yuval-noah-harari-review

https://quillette.com/2018/10/26/21-lessons-for-the-21st-century-a-review/

Looking for a positive purpose

I’m always on the lookout for books which challenge how we look at the world.  A few years back I read a really original book - The Puritan Gift (2003) – which told a powerful story of how and why American business had changed its values in the second half of the 20th Century. No less a figure than Russell Ackoff wrote a foreword calling it simply

“one of the best books I have ever read in my long life – a social history of the American nation which also doubles up as a commentary on managerial culture”

I blogged about it at the time but the book’s theme and message does deserve broadcasting….

It was written by two brothers (then in their 80s) who had migrated from Scotland in their youth and it argues that the mid-20th century strength of American business, and the prosperity and cultural confidence it created, was due to key characteristics inherited from the country's founding fathers, the Puritan dissenters. The authors list these characteristics as:

- a sense of moral purpose in life;

- a liking and aptitude for mechanical skills;

- collegiality, giving the group priority over individual interests; and organizational ability.

“The Puritan Gift is a rare ability to create organizations that serve a useful purpose, and to manage them well.”

Sadly but all too typically, the book seems to have been ignored by the management scribblers – although it is still in print. About the only person to review it seems to have been Diane Coyle to whose excellent blog I’m indebted for the following summary –

The book starts with a history of the early days and heyday of US corporations, using an Armory in Springfield, Massachussetts as a case study which illustrated the importance not only of technical know-how and innovation – but of good employer standards and collegiality – sharing know-how and best practice with other gun-makers.

One fascinating chapter describes the transplantation of this American approach to Japanese business through the actions of three communications engineers employed in the MacArthur occupation. The Japanese communications and electronics industry was remade in the image of the best of America, and the Hoppers attribute the success of the consumer electronics industry to the adoption of these management practices. A war-destroyed, impoverished country became the world's second biggest economy in the space of three decades.

Decay set in early, however, and the Hoppers' first villain is Frederick W Taylor. He started the process of turning efficient organisational structures into social hierarchies, with top managers increasingly less likely to be engineers or technicians working their way up from the shop floor.

Business schools continued this evisceration of the actual process of business, creating a professional cadre of managers, superior in status in pay, and with purely financial and abstract knowledge in place of the tacit skills and experience previously displayed by management cohorts. The downfall was completed by the steadily increasing celebration of greed, sucking the moral heart out of American capitalism.

Coyle completes her review by saying –

It's hard to disagree with the outlines of this argument, harder to know what to do about it. The final part of the book is a brief attempt to suggest some ideas, with a list of 25 principles of Puritan management. Most of these seem very sensible without setting the heart racing.

The key aspect of the Puritan Gift seems to be the sense of purpose. As John Kay has argued (in The Foundations of Corporate Success), a good business is one with a clear sense of purpose. The profits are a by-product, but without the core purpose there is no hope of sustained profitability.

Discussion about the purpose of companies ebbs and flows…..The notion of “stakeholders” was much discussed in the 1990s as a more useful concept than the much-criticised one of “shareholder value” which had emerged from the greedy 1980s. Such discussions do not these days attract much interest - but a much more interesting one hopefully got underway recently – partly sparked by talk of the “platform economy” and books such as Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organisations to which I dedicated a post a few months back.    

If I have one point to draw from my (relatively) long life, it is that we need to return to this fundamental question of purpose. And to take more seriously the question of the nature of the “good society”, the “good organisation”, the “good city”.

I know we get embarrassed by such phrases – so by all means let’s talk instead of the “healthy society”….. the “healthy organisation”……”healthy cities”…….(as did Robin Skynner and John Cleese in their 1990 book "Life - and How to Survive it!")

Update; apparently the British Academy started a new programme in 2017 on “the future of the corporation” I learned this from Paul Collier’s new book "The Future of Capitalism – facing the new anxieties” (2018) which, so far in my reading, I’m finding a very exciting read – imbued with a moral passion economists don’t normally like to display. Its opening pages use Jonathan Haidt’s analysis in “The Righteous Mind” to give one of the most incisive treatments of our present social malaise I have read in the past few decades.  

Reason as the servant of Passion

One of the delights of my house in the Carpathian Mountains is the library – with books cascading from shelving which started almost 20 years ago with a magnificent oak bookshelf and now bulge over doors, windows, corners and alcoves – anywhere not already invaded by paintings….

Coming back to the house immediately exposes me to a rich serendipity of texts many of which have lain there for years. Or which demand - and repay - rereading.

This past week has therefore been a bit of a reading week for me and I would like to share some of the gems I’ve come across not only in each of those two categories - but in a third one which is becoming more significant these days – the “virtual” one.   

“The Righteous Mind – why good people are divided by politics and religion” by Jonathan Haidt (2012) has lain undisturbed on my shelves since it arrived 4 years ago – but is one of the best psychological treatments of political issues I have read. And that includes Leo Abse’s dissection of leading politicians - “Private Member” (1973) which was bettered only by Alaister Mant’s strangely neglected “Leaders we Deserve”.

Psychologists were, of course, in the van of the reaction (which started a decade or so ago) against the overly rationalistic explanations of events - Thinking Fast and Slow; Daniel Kahneman (2012) is probably the best known of these - although it's too technical and dense for me. He may have won a Nobel prize but I gave up after a few pages - and had the same reaction just now when I pulled it down from another shelf
George Lakoff is a psychologist - and much more readable - who has been exploring this terrain - and that of "framing" (see recommended reading) - for more than two decades eg “Moral Politics – how Liberals and Politics Think” (1996); and The Political Mind – a cognitive scientist’s guide to your brain and its politics (2008).
 
Haidt’s treatment, however, shines for three reasons – first, it takes us beyond the narrow scope of a specialist and brings in, to illustrate his points, the wisdom of such writers as social philosopher David Hume and sociologist Emile Durkheim. Indeed Hume’s quip about “passion being the servant of reason” serves as the trigger for the text  

The core of the book, secondly, rests on what he identifies as six moral foundations of society viz the care/harm; fairness/cheating; loyalty/betrayal; authority/subversion; sanctity/degradation; and liberty/oppression dichotomies. He then uses this classification to suggest that the strength of the political right is their understanding of the importance of this entire range – whereas the left tend to emphasise only half of the range of values…

The final strength of the book is the way it’s structured – with the 5-6 key points of each chapter being clearly laid out and summarized. I’m an impatient reader (there are too many other interesting books waiting) and this made it much easier to skim…

It also uses the occasional diagram (something I always appreciate) one of which classifies people according to the extent to which they express EMPATHY (or “feeling for others” axis one) or SYSTEMISATION (or “classifying things or concepts” - axis two). Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant both figure in the bottom right quadrant (sociable Kant less so than the almost autistic father of utilitarianism). 

But the diagram made me realise that I too fall into that same bottom right quadrant! 
I may be a Leo but of the more retiring sort - as I learned when I took the Belbin test expecting to be confirmed as a Leader but was exposed as a "resource person". 
I was always more of a networker – if one with a strong penchant for books and typologies

Recommended Reading/viewing
The whole issue of "framing" (story-telling) is quite fascinating and is becoming a major issue as we increasingly understand the scale of both government and corporate leaders' manipulation of us all over the past century
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2014/07/stories-we-tell.html

Monoculture – how one story is changing everything by FS Michaels (2011)
Finding Frames (2011)
Warm Words – how the climate story is evolving (IPPE 2011)

Storytelling - bewitching the modern mind; Christian Salmon (2010) an epub which needs conversion to pdf
The Common Cause Handbook (2010)
Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions; Keith Grint (2008)
“Don’t Think of an Elephant – know your values and frame the debate”; George Lakoff (2004)

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2016/11/in-praise-of-documentary.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self