The Global Marketplace

Sunday musings - Evelyn Waugh and Scoop

Sundays I try to dedicate to thinking about the important matters of life, primarily through those books that provoke thought in me.  I just finished rereading Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, his satire on the press industry with a lesser focus on European colonialism.

Folly.  One of the messages in Scoop is the folly of much we do;  how much of it really matters.  In Scoop the folly is chasing news stories in colonial Africa that are truly meaningless but which sell in this silly world of ours.  I wonder;  was this really a conscious message by Waugh or did he instinctively grasp this point?  As with all literature the process is interactive and different readers will draw distinct conclusions from the same book.  I have always suspected that great writers are like other artists in that they see the work in their minds and project it on the medium--be it paper or canvas--without too much thought.  If this be true with Waugh then perhaps I am using Scoop to shine a light on the dark corners of my own life?

The world grabs our attention at all times, and it is so easy to fall into mental traps that blind us, truly blind us.  Sunday Mass is my favorite hour of the week and perhaps I cherish it because the ancient rituals and prayers make me stop my uninterrupted focus on silly things to contemplate what is important.  This is quite the journey we undertake through life, isn't it?

Sunday musings

The recent crisis, and our reaction to it, brings to mind some thoughts about the modern world.  As you know I am conservative by nature which means I harbor a healthy suspicion of the power of government to remedy the ills of the world.  All that said the nature of the modern world and its industrial economy makes me keep a few points in mind.

Powerlessness.  One of the downfalls of the modern economy is the sense of powerlessness provoked in normal people.  We lose jobs and investments to factors we could not have predicted let alone understand.  The world can also be, as noted so well by Nassim Taleb, a capricious and unfair place at times.  As such we need to believe the government is on our side against these forces.  This has nothing to do with rational thinking or justice;  I am concerned with preventing revolution, as the alternatives always lead to rabble rousers like those who brought down the Roman republic.  We need a government that is strong during a crisis.

True government.  All this in mind we cannot forget that the state's authority is always coercive in nature.  Governments pass laws to rule, and if any of us resist the power of the state the result, at the extreme, is death.  Given that force and the state are joined we cannot believe that the government represents society and our better interests; other groups in society do this.  We would do well to remember this point.

Evelyn Waugh, again

For at least the fifth (or is it the sixth?) time in twenty years I read Waugh's trilogy, The Sword of Honor, followed by Scoop.  What is so enjoyable about Waugh's writing?  What draws me back, time and again, to these enjoyable works?  I think my current crisis, trying to live a life in the modern world, is part of the attraction.  Let's save that for another day and focus on the literature.

City of God, City of Man:  Waugh's biggest attraction to me is his clear grasp of the challenges a Christian faces living in the world, a challenge which evolves but never changes.  He takes Augustine's great work to literature by using a tremendous sense of irony to describe the modern world.  In so doing he writes as a true Christian (I state this knowing little to nothing about his personal life) confronting the fundamental challenge of the modern world:  how to live by God's law in the world, knowing that the world always wants that much more of us.  This challenge, in a world that makes us treat our fellow man as a customer or vendor, is one I struggle with constantly.  Thankfully I have Waugh and his fine sense of irony to show me the way.

Next, the challenges of a worldly life.

Intellectual influences: Physics, Statistics and Consulting

Two of my favorite intellectual pursuits are quantum physics and the human mind's perception--read misperception--of statistical information.  Both of these fields have one common factor (at least to me) and that is their counterintuitive view of the world.  Looking differently at the world has become more important as my consulting career evolves--why?

1.  Background.  Schrodinger's Cat refers to the fascinating world of quantum mechanics, where the world works in ways which strain our concept of reality as it is usually described in classical physics.  To summarize Dr. Schrodinger's experiment, how we look at something determines what actually happens to the event (please forgive the glib response, my physicist friends!)  While the reasons for this are not fully explained by modern physics, we do know that this answer strains our mental frame of the world.  Nassim Taleb's books (The Black Swan being the most recent) describe the mind's misuse of statistics, which I have looked at in earlier posts.

2.  Mental ruts.  As a consultant, looking at problems in a different light is frequently the reason for my existence.  What took me a while to learn is how to look at problems from a unique point of view.  When younger I would struggle with finding a new view of the problem which usually led to pointless navel gazing.  What I learned through time and experience is this.  The first step to seeing something differently is to spot the mental grooves, or ruts, driving the problem.  What preconceived notions led to the situation?  All of us, to save time and mental energy, have mental patterns that usually serve us well but sometimes get us into trouble.  Spot these trends and you will find yourself thinking like Schrodinger and Taleb and provide the different answer.

Intellectual influences: James Grant

I am rereading James Grant's book "Money of the Mind" a thought provoking analysis of banking written in the early 1990's.  While the book was written before the full effects of the IT revolution were felt on financial services it is still worth a look, because of Grant's insights into the fundamental nature of the industry.  These points are worth pondering as they force us to step back from the pressing demands of this dynamic business to keep up us from forgetting some basic truths.  That is a subject for another day; here are two effects of Money of the Mind on me:

1.  Debt is debt.  I have an instinctive and visceral rejection of debt which I can trace back to reading this book.  I think the lure of numbers and statistics (a blog subject for another day) obscures the problems of debt and I thank this book for helping me avoid this.  Over the years debt has come to symbolize restricted options to me, and as such borrowing the money I needed to start my business five years ago was a painful step.  Consequently my second goal (the first being to make the business profitable) was paying off the debt as quickly as possible.

2.  Character.  Grant points out that lending money is fundamentally about character, specifically will the debtor pay back his obligation.  In my consulting business I have spread character as a criteria to practically every key personnel decision.  Character is the key factor I look at in hiring a full-time employee or consultant, and I also adjusted the business model to reflect this (if I have trustworthy colleagues then I can give them more room to run).  I trace this view back to Grant and my time in the Marines.

Intellectual influences: Evelyn Waugh

I have been in Europe for so long now that certain local habits have rubbed off on me.  One which I especially relish is reserving the weekend for things other than work.  In the spirit of reflection and contemplation I want to talk about Evelyn Waugh and his World War II trilogy, the Sword of Honor.  I have read these books four times over the past twenty years, a good indication of influence (as opposed to obsession?).  I will follow the example set in my earlier post on Paul Johnson and spend less time on the books and more time on why they affect me.

1.  Gervase Crouchback.  He is the father of the main character and appears in all three books.  I am drawn to him as the most sympathetic literary persona I have encountered in my years of reading, primarily because of his ability to live as a well adjusted adult who at the same time is impervious to the fads and foolishness of his age.  I wish I were the same.  Unfortunately I do find myself occasionally chasing the latest intellectual and business trends.   Is Gervase Crouchback believable?  Yes and no.  While I have not met anyone like him in real life,  I see glimpses of Crouchback in friends of mine.

2.  Progress?  Waugh takes on the idea of progress and modernity in these books, and in so doing casts doubts on many conventional truths.  As I get older I find that the concept of progress seems to spread to all of the wrong places.  Technological progress in areas like IT and biotech is clearly to be welcomed, yet not all of man's endeavors lend themselves to progress.  How far can we push human efficiency in organizations?  Probably not as far as we think.

Intellectual influences: Paul Johnson

During the summer of 1990 I drove across the U.S. to take a new job, and to pass the time I listened to an audio version of Modern Times by Paul Johnson.  I cannot remember the reason for choosing this book but it profoundly affected my thinking on the world.  As with all books that affect us, the impact is a combination of the author's work and our views at a particular time and place.  Here are my reasons.

1.  Struggling with the world.  I frequently do not understand aspects of the modern world, a result of an unusual upbringing and early life.  In 1990 I was leaving the Marines for this new job which left me uncertain as to how I would adapt.  Johnson's effort to explain the modern world and specifically the frequently irrational prejudices which pass for received truth fell on a particularly receptive audience.  Modern Times neatly condensed the modern world while taking apart many of our prejudices, and has stood the test of time (I reread it a few months ago).

2.  Moral relativism.  Johnson picks apart the moral relativism of this world we created, which created political correctness and other intellectual fashions that cause us trouble.  Moral relativism is simply the inability or unwillingness to state that something (usually an action) is right or wrong.  For example Johnson spends some efforts trying to explain the rise of Hitler in the 1930's.  Imagine a discussion today which starts with the premise that the Germans were a sophisticated and cultured people in the 1930's, and then ask how the Nazis came to power in such a climate.  I believe our moral relativism makes these conversations difficult  We may never know a clear answer but this is clearly a question worth asking to learn lessons about mankind's capacity for evil.  Johnson tackles these head on, and this has provoked me over the years to view certain trends with a healthy skepticism.

Intellectual influences: Francis Lowenheim

Francis Lowenheim was a history professor at Rice University during my undergraduate years at the school, and the first and therefore key intellectual influence in my life (after my father).  Dr. Lowenheim, now deceased, was a professor of 19th century and modern European history trained at Columbia University.  I will describe some of what I learned from him and hopefully honor his memory; ideally this will read as lessons to be learned from history and not as some key to my intellectual framework.

Place yourself back in time.  This lesson was drummed into students again and again by Dr. Lowenheim, in an effort to avoid the intellectually easy mistake of criticizing key events as armchair historians.  To study the past an honest historian has to put himself into the mind of the decision maker with only the knowledge available at that time.  While important this is still not enough;  an honest historian also learns to understand the all too human prejudices and biases of earlier eras.  It is only a modern fool who, with his belief in progress in all areas, dismisses earlier figures and their beliefs. 

How does learning to place ourselves in historical situations affect our lives?  The effect is profound, which is why I chose Dr. Lowenheim's lesson.   In my own career as a consultant, for example, the ability to look at earlier decisions with this mental framework allows me to truly learn, especially about my own biases and outlooks.  I look at the world through rose colored glasses which has the positive benefit of avoiding discouragement.  On the other hand these glasses have blinded me to opportunities that were simply not viable.  Knowing this allows me to compensate while making decisions.  Looking at situations and circumstances with Dr. Lowenheim's framework also helps me better understand clients and the pressures they face.  To say this has been a key to my success would be an understatement.  The ability to do this is not some form of innate genius but rather an intellectual viewpoint I acquired from Dr. Lowenheim's lectures.

Hard work.   Dr. Lowenheim was not a highly sought professor at Rice because of his demanding work loads.  We typically read upwards of 600 pages per week, and I think the average weekly reading load over a semester was closer to 900 pages.  We did this to accomplish the above stated goal of getting inside the heads of historical decision makers, which can only be done through primary sources.

Why has this lesson stuck with me more than twenty years after I attended my last class with Dr. Lowenheim?  The obvious answer is the lesson that hard work pays off, which most of us know and which has certainly proven true in my consulting career.  Deeper still, however, is learning that extensive primary research keeps us from believing the shallow half truths which frequently pass for the intellectual status quo.  For in researching primary sources Dr. Lowenheim taught me that many popular theories were just wrong.  This developed in me an innate skepticism of certain ideas and trends that continues to serve me well, primarily by avoiding the latest business and consulting fads.

On a personal note the classes with Dr. Lowenheim were far and away the best moments of my years at Rice.  The intellectual stimulation developed in me a love for history which still breathes, however suppressed by the needs of the modern business world.  In consequence my life is clearly richer, and hopefully I have repaid a small bit, a very small bit, of the debt I owe to this great man.

The Modern Age--who is in control?

My children will frequently tell you that I was born in the wrong century, a comment which reflects my comfort with the past and occasional discomfort with the world we have created.  Their remark contains some truth and I hope from time to time to elaborate on this view of the world, sometimes from the point of view of a fondness for the past, sometimes from a distrust of the present.  Through all of these thoughts I intend to avoid having you believe that I am a crank:  the fact is I love the era in which I live but that is for another day--let's stick to the subject at hand.

The issue of controlling our lives is a big issue in the modern industrial age.  The era of large corporations and governments provokes this, as seen by the following:

--How many times do you hear friends and colleagues refer to their employers as "they", as in "they are sending me here for two months"?  Notice a sense of frustration with the organization controlling their fates while serving some other agenda?

--How frequently do we believe the government--especially in Washington--always takes from us while never giving us a fair share of what we want?

--How often do you notice David Brooks' observation about our tendency to collect in small groups while thinking less of others actually happen?  Often, right?

None of these views are rational or irrational--that is not the point.  What underpins all of them is a sense of powerlessness regarding perceived larger forces at work;  the third point is a reaction to that feeling.  The reason for this?  I believe it is a result of our increasing interaction with larger institutions beyond our daily experience.  That which we don't know well can scare us at times.

What do we do?  Perspective and wisdom are usually the right answer but let's save that for another day, all right?

A good friend

This post is dedicated to David, a good friend who always probes and provokes me to look at the world beyond the business I am running.  Why is this important?

1.  Recharge the batteries.  Intellectually we need to engage our brains on something other than our profession.  This way we forget problems for a while until we look at them with fresh eyes.

2.  An interesting world.  David is a fascinating man who, to be quite honest, makes me glad to be alive and grateful for the intellectual pleasures of this life.  Looking at different things is key to this.

3.  Americans abroad.  By default and American businessman will read about things that affect the U.S.  This will contrast with what you see in the foreign business environment and as such will help your success.