Different Beauty

The beauty of conservatism lies in protecting the things we love. In keeping them holy. With less questioning, and more trust, we can build. Lean in. Go deep. Rather than poking and prodding the foundations to find weaknesses, we can refine the structures. By trusting what has come before, we can move forward. The constraints allow for creativity by cutting off the stress of which path to choose. There is one path. Continue.

The beauty of change lies in the new. In possibility. In multiple paths. In keeping life holey. In tearing down the structures that had held us back, and starting again. Choosing new constraints, or throwing constraints away altogether. Rather than building consensus, change can empower us to strike out on our own. To make decisions without permission. To redefine the impossible. To run. To scream. To cry. Start.

Why There?

Why do we live where we live? Daniel Gilbert talks about the three biggest determinants of our happiness being where we live, what we do, and who we marry. We used to live where we were born, do what the parent of the same gender did, and marry someone from the neighbourhood. Ken Robinson says 7 of his 8 great grandparents were from the same area. That isn't how it has played out for me. We live in the age of the escape hatch. Some time ago I had to accept permanent uncertainty. I can't choose to live near friends. They move. Family moves. Jobs move. If I like my colleagues, they to move on. I am a self declared Liberal. I love change. I love discomfort. I fully get Conservative love of protecting things as they are. People don't move easily. It is normally because of a big life decision. Left or right. The reality is when people throw their worlds up in the air, they leave a bit of themselves behind. It isn't always by choice. Life makes a lot of decisions for us, and all we can do is choose how to respond. We cope.

A stretched Global Local Boy

Voting Away

I am a Soutie. There were 48 people from all over the world at the ceremony when I became a British Citizen. It was a beautiful thing. The speech spoke of Britain as an idea, like Marcus Aurelius spoke of Rome in The Gladiator, 'There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile.  And I fear that it will not survive the winter.' This is not the story of Britain I grew up with in South Africa. It is not the way Britain is viewed around the world. It was something that was worth believing in. When the Referendum came, I was gutted. My European Citizenship was voted away. A brutal reminder that we aren't essentially anything. Anything temporary can't be who we are. So I am not South African. Not British. Not a Soutie. I am the relationships I have with people. No one can vote those away. Today, I voted. I voted Liberal Democrats because I believe in a world where we don't convince people. We empower people. 

Homo Deus

There are a few books I have read that stand out as having challenged a deeply held belief of mine. Books that made me pause sufficiently long to change path. I have long considered myself liberal. A Word I associate with tolerance, and willingness to listen and learn. Homo Deus looks at the roots of liberalism in the enlightenment and humanism. The raising of the rights of the individual over the state. Human Rights. The book, along with Illiberal Reformers has made me far less comfortable with the idea of the individual as the basic unit of who we are. Less comfortable with the idea of Progress, especially when imposed on others in civilising missions. 

As we move to a connected world, where Artificial Intelligence can listen to the internally competing ideas and signals of our emotions, relationships and experiences - the day may soon come where others understand us better than we understand ourselves. Ideas of self, free-will, autonomy, trust and decision making will be turned on their head. This is an important book.

Pushing Back

I felt like I grew up in the liberal part of South Africa. Only white people got to vote, but I grew up feeling like most of the people around me felt like that was wrong. There weren't massive protests and the bigger opposition party was to the right of the Apartheid government. Liberal is relative. Most of the people I know in South Africa are still conservative in many ways. Deeply religious and soaked in values like hard work, loyalty, discipline and community.

Apartheid partly grew out of a Nationalist reaction to the British Empire. The Scorched Earth policy that saw farms burnt, and women and children placed in Concentration Camps left a deep hatred of the English. Instead of looking towards Dutch roots, the Afrikaans community responded to the pushback on empires by developing a stand alone identity. Afrikaans became the official language in 1925.

Scorched Earth

The Cape was originally a Dutch Colony which mixed (some friendly and mostly not) with the local San and Khoikhoi. Post Napoleon, the British eventually took control. The British saw empire building partly as a Civilising Mission. The area had 100 years of border wars between the isiXhosa and the Dutch Colonists. Imperialists dreamt of a Pax Britannica with British control from Cape to Cairo. After wrestling control through horrific Anglo-somebody wars, attempts were then made to rebuild Unions and Federations.

I understand the motivations behind the self-determination that led to Apartheid. There are still people alive whose grandparents would have been in those concentration camps. There are still people alive who knew the English looked down on them as simple farmers.

In trying to understand the mess of the last year with a push back against globalisation, I think the history of Apartheid is very relevant. Conservatives are far more able to build strong groups than Liberals. The Group is more important than the individual. That allows for coherence and shared aims. It allows for pragmatism and working towards goals that don't change. It allows for consistency that means people in the group can be supportive of each other rather than arguing over nuanced differences.

In moving to the United Kingdom 9 years ago, I have seen just how conservative even the bit of South Africa I grew up in was and is. There are lots of good people there. There is lots of room for increased tolerance of outsiders. 

You don't build tolerance through attacks. You build it through relationships.

Divided Individual

Positive goals can have unintended consequences. One push back on liberalism is a push back on individualism and selfishness. A suggested answer is to create bigger groups. This allows us to focus on something bigger than ourselves. If that group is defined by its differences from others, even though that difference is common ground within the ingroup, it leads to the same negative effects that repulse us from selfishness. Thomas Leonard tells of the progressive movements push to give moral gravity to bigger groups of the individual. To focus on the 'nation, state, society, commonwealth, public, people, race, and, especially, the social organism'. If the story we use to build our confidence is a story that pushes us above others, by finding strength in others like us, that isn't a push back on individualism. That is just redefining the divided individual.

 

Becoming We

We are here. That much we know, and we are trying to figure things out. We have things we want to protect, and things we want to change. The world is complex, ambiguous and uncertain and our biology and experience prevents us from ever understanding. We see depending on what we have seen. We learn depending on the path we take.

I approach this quagmire by trying to deconstruct my identity. I don't like the part of building tribes that separates me from other people. I want to learn more about how to build communities. Part of that requires investing less in 'finding yourself' and more in listening to the stories of others. In order to understand those stories, we have to find some sort of common ground. A path from each other's world views. A shared language. Listening is finding yourself in others.

I see the value in wanting to protect. In holy. We invest a lot in our stories. I have always invested deeply in relationships and groups. My school, my city, my church, my country, my continent, my second country, my university, my residence and each of the companies that I have worked at. When I meet with colleagues I used to work with, I still talk about 'We'. I don't leave relationships. I replay stepping on every pebble on my path in my head. In my heart. My story is a deeply connected web of the people I have loved. Each of those individual relationships comes about from having been part of a community that was exclusive in some way. Each one of those relationships is part of my privilege.

 

Westville, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal

Having landed up here we have been slowly trying to figure out how to experience this beautiful, difficult, scary, bewildering place together. The best way to do that as being a combination of Human Rights, Constitutions and Institutions - Social Contracts. Sets of agreements forged through experience. Through lessons learnt from our shared history. Agreements based on an increased consciousness. Agreements built through chipping away at our ignorance. Chipping away at our prejudice.

South Africa, the University of Cape Town, The United Kingdom

I love being able to lean deeply into a shared story. Something where we feel special, exclusive, different, unique - together. We need to forge a world where that is okay, but doesn't stop others from being able to do that. That doesn't stop us and others being on the same team in other groups. 

The heart of Social Contracts is the 'Veil of Ignorance'. If you don't know which role you are to play, what is the bare minimum that is acceptable for any player? What would allow every player to participate fully? That is Human Rights. The core fundamentals that as a group we decide everyone should have. Then we can build on top of that as many groups with different rules as we like. 

A variety of meals from our common ingredients.

Order v Movement

If the world is divided simplistically into Conservatives (Order) and Liberals (Movement), I would normally fall towards the choice of movement. In truth though, I am actually quite a rule abiding guy. I drive like Miss Daisy, more keen on getting myself and my passengers to the destination alive than fast. I am very punctual, not wanting to waste other people's time by being late. I don't swear in front of friends who don't swear. I adjust my behaviour to be polite to whoever I am with. 

A great example of where I see value in Conservatism is the choice of Yoga I do. Sivananda Yoga is very traditional. Loose fitting clothing covering shoulders and ankles. The room is not heated. The 12 core postures practised in the Asana classes are simple and the same as have been done for thousands of years. They aren't looking to change. The lessons are the lessons that have been built up slowly and patiently. The only concession the Swami who brought the style of Yoga to Europe and North America made was to shift the breathing exercises from the end of the standard class to the beginning. This was because too many students who were just keen on the 'physical exercises' would get up and leave.

The most difficult students to teach are the ones who have learnt other styles of Yoga and come in very resistant to any correction. Unless they are disrupting a class, there is no real point in trying to teach them anything else. It is best to just let them be. There is no attempt to say 'this is a superior way'. It is just the way things are done at the Sivananda centres. It is a beautiful way. If however, you choose another way and you aren't hurting anybody... it's all good.

I do like the fact that there is a place I can go to practise my yoga where there is no alcohol, no meat, no loud music, no sexy clothing and a sense of pervading calm. I do drink. I do eat meat. I like music. I love sexy clothing. The reality is that some things are best kept holy. I don't think holy has to be synonymous with true. I think it is a form of consistency. A form of value. Like we don't mix all our favourite foods in a bucket with a wafer thin mint.

Yummy Meat Free Food

Order and movement don't need to be in opposition. It shouldn't be a simplistic either or. The world is more grey than that. They world is more beautiful than that. Somehow we need to find a way to listen to each other and build a world that considers us all. Not a world where we impose ourselves on each other when we are positioned to dominate.

A world where we empower each other.

Confidently Achilles

We don't like to think of ourselves as the bad guy. I am trying to read more about Cecil John Rhodes as a way of understanding the obstacles liberalism finds itself facing. Rhodes wasn't the arch-villain we have in Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. He would have been considered liberal. Even Stalin, Hitler and Mao wouldn't have been the arch-villains we think of now if we had met them in person. If we had been in and of their time and culture. I can imagine Rhodes as having been an awesome person to meet. He sounds like he had incredible empathetic skill. An ability to listen to people. An ability to engage with people from other cultures and understand what was important to them. Then bend them to his will.

Rhodes had a deep belief in and pride in the ideas behind Imperialism. He was a believer in the 'Civilising Mission'. He would have been passionate in his grand schemes. He would have been convincing. Laced in among all this ability was an underlying superiority complex that was the achilles heal. I get more worried about the people who are 'mostly trying' than I do about the people who don't care at all. Casual racism. Casual busyness. Casual anger. Casual tribalism. Casual barriers that stop us from building a really great society.

Confidence is infectious. Missions provide something to aspire to. Confident Missions don't provide lots of space for listening unless they are shared. I prefer small ideas. I prefer conversation. I prefer relationships. Finding small achievable goals to chip away at in partnership.

Custodian

We need to be very careful that the measures we choose to set goals by actually reflect what is important to us. Liberal anger at wealth/income inequality is one of the measures that concerns me. It doesn't make sense to me if you think other things are more important than money, that money should be the measure that riles you the most. In 'Big Hand to Big Mouth' I highlight Branko Milanovic's point that someone can have a very high income but zero or negative wealth, because they are spending all or more than all of what they earn. Sorry, they are not poor.

I agree 100% that absolute poverty is something worth directing Liberal energy at. I spoke about some of the big problems facing us in 'Ignoring Cape Town', 'No Hero' and 'Free'. I am not at all convinced that someone who is happily living a simple life need be very concerned about someone who is incredibly rich. An incredibly rich person still just has one mouth, one tummy and can only sleep in one bed. It is the incredibly poor person who deserves more concern. Most of the very rich's wealth is invested in businesses that are making stuff, not big swimming pools of unused gold.

This is actually an interesting difference between the rich who live hand to mouth (high income) and those rich who have a lot of wealth. The best way to think of money is as your employee. You have to hire your own money by investing it rather than spending it. Once you do that, your money will grow if you don't spend everything it makes. At some point, your employee should be earning as much as you and then work becomes a choice. Money will work for you rather than you working for money. The sustainably wealthy think of themselves as custodians of their wealth. In the same way as green minded people realise that we can't destroy the planet if we want a home, the sustainably wealthy know that you need to be spending less than your money is earning. If Governments thought like the wealthy, there would eventually be no need for tax. If national assets were invested rather than spent (think mineral wealth), they would be able to generate a salary from which people could live. This would be more fair on future generations too. Why should a country's wealth be consumed now? 

For both wealth and the environment, it makes a huge difference if you think of yourself as a custodian rather than a consumer.

Cultivating Moral Humility

Stuart mentioned Jonathan Haidt on his blog just a couple of days ago and lo and behold I come across him in my daily dose of TED in his talk on the real difference between liberals and conservatives or cultivating moral humility.

I strongly encourage you to watch it. The talk is one of those very appealing ones where you really don't feel like he is trying to convince you of anything... but rather that he is just giving you an insight into what he is thinking.

Most of the time in whatever we do, we are trying to convince others that we are right. I do it all the time, perfectly natural. My problem is I even start `steam-rolling' people when I get really excited about an idea. I cut in, speak louder or try and be more persuasive.

Really truely and honestly empathising and trying to understand someone Else's point of view is very very hard. Next time you are having an argument or discussion, catch yourself while the other person is speaking, and honestly answer the question of whether you are listening with the intention of understanding or waiting for an opportunity to make your next point. Yes, but...

There are tricks which normally feel very artificial where a facilitator gets one person to speak and the other to ask questions. Questions that are not Socratic leading questions where you already have an intended answer in mind and take someone down a path, but delving questions. Anyone who has participated in something like this knows how hard it is to NOT direct conversation in light of your current beliefs/opinions.

Haidt makes a good point, similar to the one made in the Wilkinson/Knobe Bloggingheads that often the people who are really interested in a particular field are naturally inclined to agree. The majority of TED members are liberal. The majority of scientists are atheists. The majority of philosophers & psychologists have a lot of common ground. So often, you fight and fight and fight your way to get agreement with people when the people who disagree with you most strongly aren't even involved in the discussion.

This doesn't make for great truth seeking.

I don't know what the answer is. And the platitudes like listen more, empathise more, examine dispassionately and more eagerly the sides of the arguments you disagree with... sound like the right answer, but I think they are so counter-intuitive and unnatural that without conscious active attempts to do it... it won't happen.