Extended Challenges

When a country isn’t wealthy enough (e.g. South Africa), or even if a country is wealthy enough (e.g. the United Kingdom), to have a solid safety net, we start pushing responsibility to owners and managers saying, “they need to look after the employees and create jobs.” In some ways, I think that is fair. Firms can use team language when convenient and treat people (employees and clients) as disposable tools at other times. The danger with that is the condescending idea that there is a class of people responsible for looking after people, and an underclass of dependents doing their bidding for a hand-to-mouth living. Both decision-making and responsibility can be shared in a way consistent with autonomy and consent. If we build proper resilience and endurance. If we aren’t solely reliant on salaries or welfare. What happens when companies go bust? What happens when countries can’t tax more or borrow more? As we have seen during the Covid crisis, a large number of the institutions we rely on are not designed for extended periods of challenge. To be creative, you need the capacity to survive the winter. Wealth creation is at its heart, risk management. 

Ice Age Earth

Turning on the Lights

A reasonable definition for Politics would be “the management of information asymmetries to get the desired outcome of a particular tribe”. I know more than you. I want something different to you. I am going to win. Whether in the staffroom, boardroom, or changeroom, if there is more than one pulse there is normally Politics. It is also very similar, however it is dressed up, because it is the balancing of competing desires. I am in favour of universal empowerment because it reduces the obligation to do stuff for people in the dark. An independently strong foundation to retreat to is a powerful underlying safety net. It empowers the word No, and in doing so, makes the word Yes more meaningful. Enthusiastic, informed consent. When things are swapped (or a thing and some money), value is created if both parties know all they need to know and are better off after the swap. If the story changes when you switch on the lights, it is not a story worth telling.

Edinburgh Torch Procession

Shining Light

Safe Space

There are two opposing ideas around Safe Spaces. One is that it is a place where people hide you from being triggered. Full of cuddles. The opposite is that it is a place where people find your triggers. Where you learn to be stronger than them. 

I carry a fair amount of anger around with me. I can be very confrontational. This is not the way a lot of people know me. That is because it is not a side I like.

I like calm Trev. Yogi Trev. I like the version of me that listens, asks questions, and tolerates ideas that are very different to mine. I like warmth and good humour.

But.

I am still someone who will put myself in between a bully and someone else. I am still fairly easy to tease, if I misinterpret it as a jibe rather than banter. I think there is a difference. I tease a bunch of my friends, and they tease me. That is normally because things are fundamentally okay between us. The humour can tease out the truth. 

I still have a Saviour Complex. A Justice Warrior Complex. I still absolutely hate feeling unfairly judged or misunderstood. Shut down, cut off, or pushed to the side.

With some of my closer friends, I let my guard down in the second version of the Safe Space. I let myself get angry. I put aside the Emotional Intelligence tools that you learn in order to make your way through the world. I genuinely don't like myself in those spaces. It is obviously very much a part of who I am though.

Those safe spaces scare me a little. They make me think that maybe that is 'who I really am'.

I don't consciously believe there is a 'who I really am'. I think we are a collection of habits, emotions, reflex responses and stories we tell ourselves. Our ability to forget and to imagine allows us to decide who we are. If we are willing to put the work into understanding what drives us. Anger drives me.

Prejudice Vaccine

A Vaccine contains the agent that causes the disease, but prepares the immune system to recognise and destroy these microorganisms in later encounters. I don't like the idea of 'Safe Spaces' that avoid all triggers or ideas we struggle with. I see universities and communities as a place to teach us to cope with challenges. Not to avoid them. Recognising the things that are not acceptable in others, in even tiny doses in ourselves is likely the best way to genuinely challenge prejudice. I don't consider myself a racist. My parents brought me up as Apartheid was dying, to celebrate the birth of a New South Africa. However, I do see the Racism Vaccine in my behaviour and responses. Moving to the UK, I definitely see the same 'them and us' prejudice and restraints but through the eyes of a class-based society. Where word, food, name and clothing choice indicates what 'type' of person you are. I am intolerant of children on busses behaving aggressively. I do feel superior to people spitting gum on the floor. I am bothered by people in both the upper classes and lower classes of British culture with behaviours that breech the rules I grew up with. Even if they 'look like me'. I do respond respond badly, and feel uncomfortable. Mirrors are more powerful weapons of understanding than pitch-forks. Mirrors are our prejudice vaccine. 

Polio Vaccine

The Crazies

There are lots of crazies in this world. Fortunately they do not represent the majority. In the past they did. Fifty years from now we may look back and think that today they do. When I look back 50 years now, I am very glad to live in a world that is less violent, less racist, less homophobic, less sexist and more able to have discussion, be friends with, live with and even marry people who are very different from us.

I like the fact that the crazies are allowed to speak. Free Speech is awesome. If someone is free to open their mouth and say, 'Look at me, I am a crazy.' that lets me avoid them. When someone posts a facebook status update that makes my jaw hit the floor, I can be grateful that I have a little insight into a person that allows me to artfully reduce the time in their company.

There is a fascinating story, I think from Freakonomics, which tells the story of how the response to 9/11 increased the circle around an airport where people would rather choose to drive. Driving is far more dangerous than flying. Road accidents are the 8th on the rankings of leading causes of death, not far behind HIV/AIDS. By increasing security the time it takes to fly from A to B increases. This means more people will choose to drive instead. So they choose the more dangerous method to save time. The increased security ironically leads to more deaths.

Like terrorism, sharks and tidal waves, certain stories scare us more. We aren't wired to look at the facts. I think the same is true with free speech and 'crazies'. Trolls on the internet use this approach to hijack conversations and provoke a response. I think the appropriate response when someone says something dodgy is to quietly suck the air out of the room. Secretly, you can be grateful to the troll for letting you know they are a moron. Trolls do not reflect the majority opinion. Increasing the policing of trolls will likely ironically lead to their opinions gaining more value than they deserve.

Megan asked some interesting questions about the consistency of our criticism of some forms of speech in her guest post 'We need to talk about Charlie'. Another issue that often gets brought up in teasing out difficult issues is the creation of 'Safe Spaces'. I find the idea of a safe space appealing in the sense of making even trolls feel comfortable saying what they want to say. That doesn't mean we need to feed them though. I mean comfortable in the sense of a lack of physical attack. They can feel free to say their stuff though. I would say universities and social media are awesome places to be safe spaces in this sense. I think they are terrible places to be safe spaces in terms of providing trigger free retreats for people who are trying to protect themselves as they recover from trauma.

I do think we can create little protected bubbles to protect holy stories. I don't think these places are the places where ideas change or develop though. They are respites. On Bloggingheads TV, Robert Wright and Judith Shulevitz discuss the ideas of safe spaces, free speech, political correctness and whether or not universities are creating a generation of people that are soft by protecting them too much.

Fighting trolls is feeding trolls.

See the talk at Bloggingheads

Safe in Your Tribe (by Neville Scott)

Guest Post: Neville Scott

I met Neville in my first job after university. He headed the glamorously named 'Modelling Team'. It was their job to work with the Actuaries in Product Development to take whatever ideas we had and clarify them. If ideas could be clearly articulated, they could be built into models that could do what they were meant to. Neville also arranged weekly learning sessions where we would focus on a different concept that would help in our quest to think better. One of the most lasting lessons I got from those Monday mornings was the idea of describing something (and yourself) by what it is rather than what it isn't. I wrote about this idea in 'Aporcupine Apineapple'. Neville is always curious and has lots of interesting ideas. I hope this is the first of many guest posts.

Safe in Your Tribe
by Neville Scott

Many years ago I saw an experiment on a TV program. They set up a huge pyramid of coke tins in a supermarket. With a touch sensor and a device to collapse the pyramid when touched. Successive people looked at it, touched it, and then witnessed the calamitous collapse of tins clattering noisily over them and all over the shop. Lawyers, doctors, housewives, ministers, children all touched it and triggered the collapse, and every single one declared loudly "I never touched it!"

They all lied.

The experimenters put forward an interesting hypothesis. People are herding animals who don't individually have all of the tricks needed for their own survival and need to stick together. Herding creatures know that expulsion from the herd means death. And apparently collapsing a monster pyramid of coke cans in a supermarket generates a significant herd-rejection fear.

On the science level, we've got at least two completely independent brains: the survival brain (amygdala) and logic brain (frontal lobe). Simplistically our amygdala maintains lists of life threatening stuff. It got high speed hard-wiring to sensors (sight, hearing, ...) and hard-wiring to the central nervous system to trigger action. If it senses something on its list, it fires survival actions. And it doesn't consult the far slower-acting logic brain. It doesn't concern itself with morality or logic. Its sole job is to keep you alive. It manages its list:

• Every time it learns of a new risk it adds it to the list. Cars. Rocks. Pointy things. Big Johnny.
• If it is repeatedly exposed to a listed item with no ill effect it may shift down the list. Even off the list. Fear of heights can be overcome.

If you abuse it for too long it gets confused and can malfunction and start firing false alarms. Anxiety attacks, panic disorder, PTSD, shell shock - these are the survival brain misfiring. Apparently most people are born with spiders & snakes pre-coded on the list. And mice are born with cats in their list - a newborn mouse panics when exposed to cat hair.

The frontal lobe does the thinking and moralising and logic stuff. But it doesn't have the same hard-wire privileges of the amygdala. It gets information far later and takes longer to respond. Throw a ball at a person. They will invariably duck immediately, then say "what was that?". The survival brain saw the danger immediately and generated the ducking survival action. The frontal lobe eventually woke up and got vaguely fascinated about what they hell just happened. It seems we are hard-wired to survive; and be logical later.

The Amygdala (left red) and the Frontal Lobe (right blue)

So we've got these brains operating independently. When we're scared the survival brain is dominant and triggering defensive responses. When we're safe the logical brain is dominant and making moral and sensible decision. Simon Sinek tells us why good managers make you feel safe.

Let me stretch the hypothesis and suggest that herding creatures feel safest when they are in the company of others that "feel" like the same herd: Genes, Qualifications, Profession, Race, Religion, School, Politics,... The 911 attacks triggered enormous herding polarisation. Winning the rugby world cup defined the "South African" herd and aligned those within it against an external common enemy. My takeout is that environments of perceived safety allow morality, tolerance and peaceful co-existence. Perceived danger awakens defensive responses and cause polarization into herds and survival responses. "I never touched it!"

The moments when the brightest, most trusted people look you straight in the eye and blatantly lie. They're scared. Something has awakened their fear of herd expulsion. For managers and governments: if you want teamwork and a sense of national identity - make people feel safe.

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In writing a blog about several topics in which I admit to being a complete beginner, I am going to have to rely heavily on the people I am writing for who cumulatively know most of what I am likely to learn already. I would love it if some of you found the time to write a guest post on the subject of happiness or learning. The framework I use for thinking about these things is what I call the '5 + 2 points' which includes proper (1) exercise, (2) breathing, (3) diet, (4) relaxation, (5) positive thinking & meditation, (+1) relationships, (+2) flow. Naturally if you would like to write about something that you think I have missed, I would love to include that too. If you are up to doing something more practical, it would be awesome if you did a 100 hour project and I am happy to do the writing based on our chats if that is how you roll. Email me at trevorjohnblack@gmail.com 

Running Towards (by Brian Levings)

Guest Post: Brian Levings

I go way back with the Levings (and Moll) family. Far enough back to have embarrassing photos. Ruth and I were in the same class for several years until the boys and girls were cruelly separated as is South African custom. Good for the boys since Ruth used to destroy us in the classroom. Brian was with my brother and I got to know him well too. I caught up recently with both of them, after several years, at a braai for a mutual friend visiting the UK. Brian and Ruth are both teachers and relocated their family a few years back. Dan Gilbert, author of the wonderful book 'Stumbling on Happiness', talks about how we used to live where we were born, do what our parents did, and marry someone from the neighbourhood. These are key factors in happiness and present really difficult choices with expanding options. As Megan discussed - the curse of choice. One of the challenges to tough choices is being second guessed. Brian sat down and responded to a challenge from the braai friend (who happens to be our mutual mentor, Richard Erasmus) to talk about some of the things that are tough to be honest about. His outpouring is raw.

Brian is the one in the short shorts on the left... less a couple of decades.

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Running Towards
by Brian Levings

"Someone got stabbed... killed... did you say murdered!? Ha ha, and you moved half way across the world!" On so many levels, this kind of comment must be what I as a white South African male (I guess ex if you look at my passport) who uprooted my family find the hardest to take, the hardest to keep quiet about - it's been years and is a real personal struggle for me.

A while ago, our very reverend Richard Erasmus asked people on Facebook what they find most difficult to be honest about - for me, this is it - you know what, I left it all behind, I dragged my wife away from her loving and incredibly close family, we said goodbye to a church and friends that have shaped our lives, I gave up an incredible job with my kids schooling mapped out at independent schools until they were 18, a house I could only dream of and I emigrated - AND I'm happy I did. There you go, I said it. I made the right choice and I'm glad I did it. I don't want to step on anyone's toes but you see, I have to walk on eggshells around those people who are just too blinkered to realise that not all of us ridicule the country of our birth, not all of us moved away because we couldn't handle the heat - I've read so many of the 'we're really not interested in you bashing our lovely country, just enjoy your life in the miserable cold damp of the UK' articles because... how dare I have made the right choice. How dare I be happy and feel safe with my loved ones. How dare I feel comfortable for my wife to be out alone late at night. How dare I rate children's current education as one that is strong and rigorous - I'm meant to be miserable under the grey gloom of the English climate but I am not. As much as I love South Africa and  speak well and fondly of her, no matter how much I sometimes yearn for the relaxed and friendly nature that is a South African, for the knock on the door which says, I'm here and no, I didn't put it in the diary 3 months ago, but I'm coming in, I am happy. My wife is happy. My children are happy.

I'm not an idiot. I knew there was crime here. I knew that people died here, horrible deaths too. I knew that it rained here, a lot. I knew that I'd be tearing my wife from her family and friends. Something leaving the country does very quickly is show you your true friends. I think those who have done so know exactly what I mean. But what I didn't know was how my breath would be taken away when I walked to the edge of the cliffs of Malta, what it felt like to be surrounded by Mediterranean culture eating and singing on the cobbled streets of an historic castle in Spain. I didn't know what it was like to take the Northern line for 3 stops, jump on to the Circle line for another 3 and whatever you do, don't stand on the left side of the escalator. I didn't know what it was like to drive on the right side of the road, or how difficult it is to get a car into an Italian roundabout, the chaotic nature of des Champs-Élysées traffic or what it was like to fall off one of those stupid snow chairs half way up to the blue route - never managed a black! The warmth of the Irish culture, the blue eyed ladies (sorry love), the palm trees swaying on a sandy Caribbean beach while sipping on a brandy and coke in a jacuzzi draped with sheeting and all the frills was all a world I did not know. Or what it was like to smell the disgusting gasses of walking into a volcano of the St Lucian islands; I had no idea.

I do now and I'm better for it. I make no excuse for enjoying it. I make no apology - as much as you may love South Africa, please know this: I didn't run away from, I ran toward something else - I never wanted to offend you, I never wanted to be seen as your hostile now that I've left. I just want to be seen as someone who left a country they love and have awesome memories of, but also, a person who wants to experience more of life, more of the world, more of other cultures and I'm tired of being labelled 'one of those people'.

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In writing a blog about several topics in which I admit to being a complete beginner, I am going to have to rely heavily on the people I am writing for who cumulatively know most of what I am likely to learn already. I would love it if some of you found the time to write a guest post on the subject of happiness or learning. The framework I use for thinking about these things is what I call the '5 + 2 points' which includes proper (1) exercise, (2) breathing, (3) diet, (4) relaxation, (5) positive thinking & meditation, (+1) relationships, (+2) flow. Naturally if you would like to write about something that you think I have missed, I would love to include that too. If you are up to doing something more practical, it would be awesome if you did a 100 hour project and I am happy to do the writing based on our chats if that is how you roll. Email me at trevorjohnblack@gmail.com 

Telephone Directories

20 years ago, if you wanted to find someone... you looked them up in the telephone directory and it had their number and their physical address. We didn't think twice about the fact that anyone could find out where you live.

Maybe it was because the world was smaller. Most people hadn't really gone overseas, and you lived, worked and played in a fairly small area. Maybe you ventured somewhere for holidays if you were lucky, but pretty much most of your activity was in one place. Even then, I don't think my family knew as many people in the neighbourhood as maybe was the case 20 years before that.

Now, perhaps there is just a fear of a boundaryless world where you really don't know anyone for certain?

Maybe that's true. But I think it is becoming harder, not easier, for those dodgy members of our society who make others live in fear to get away with it. More and more it is harder to hide who you are and what you have done. Perhaps this is scary, but maybe it is actually a step towards a safer world.

Seth Godin points out that 'Google Never Forgets'. Google yourself, you will be surprised what it picks up! More and more you (and the dodgy people out there) will have a digital footprint wherever you go.

Yes, this brings up issues of privacy. But maybe it means we are all just going to have to live more honest lives. 'The Washington Post Test', where if you knew what you were about to do would appear on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow, would you do it anyway?