Action and Consequence

As our decision-making scales, it also has consequences that ripple. I find it incredibly disheartening when I have done a lot of work, and then a decision gets made that means none of that work is used. Scale also means disconnection between where the work is done, and where the consequences are felt. If the decision maker is doing the work, they can be doing constant triage on marginal effort. Once outsourced, if the work goes done a different path, you need to wait till check-in points to find that out. 

Outsourcing work without outsourcing decision-making requires very clear questions. For anything to actually happen, late-stage decision-making often involves closing down options. Accepting constraints and shipping. Making choices in the face of ambiguity. Reducing the number of things that will make you change your mind. In a world of practical decisions, you can never make the perfect choice. There are always trade-offs. 

“An ounce of practice beats a ton of theory” requires loops of action and consequence. Consequence that can be felt in a reality that is complex, ambiguous, and uncertain. We have to engage with the world. Learning to build consensus is how the interconnected scale works. Unstated rules that allow us to go deeper, but when those rules break... require engaging in difficult unlearning and relearning. 

There are very few areas where we can be the only decision maker. Where it doesn’t matter what other people think. In most cases, we are forced to engage in the messy process of joint decision-making. That requires skills like social, cultural, and emotional intelligence and an awareness of, and interest in, other people’s stories. It requires acknowledging the challenge we face by only being able to judge from our context, and our need to expand our context to see and resee.

Feeling Consequences

Erosion gully caused by introduction of Rabbits as game animals

No for Now

One way to pay for a Universal Basic Income would be to build up the capital to dedicate to it. 

That is true of everything. Not all good ideas are good business ideas, but you can pay for good ideas that can’t pay for themselves. Our spending choices are seldom made in isolation. There are trade offs. 

This is why it is so hard to build up capital when immediate needs are forced decisions. Many people borrow for emergencies because they have no other choice. They can’t afford to wait. This means they end up paying more than they can afford, because the price includes interest. If they couldn’t afford to pay upfront, they may struggle to pay the loan off... so they can end up paying interest on interest. They can’t afford to wait OR to borrow. 

Each spending decision is not simply about whether you want the thing or not. Spending decisions have consequences. If you open one door, what door does it close? Broad Framing is the abilty to stand back and evaluate your decisions in context. Saying, “No” to one thing may enable you to say “Yes” to another thing that is more important to you. 

Being able to hold onto things that are important in the long term is one of our biggest challenges. Giving equal weight to our future selves. Building capital is a cost effective and powerful way to prevent forced short-term decisions... if you can fight off the short-term decisions that stop you from building capital!

Tristan da Cunha

The World's most isolated island

Decisions are not made in isolation.

Chosen Path

When I reflect on my path, there are often people who arrive at a similar point to me. Path making is so complicated that they normally veer off. I bump into others and have fun memories of the portion of the path we have shared, but it is very unusual to stay in a similar place. Life happens. 

I have learnt to hold lightly to the teams that I am a part of, no matter how much I like them. To hold lightly to the friends that live nearby. Unless it is your life partner, where you have made a commitment to make the hard decisions, and do the work, to forge a path together. With others you care about, paths can cross, fade, reconnect, or run alongside. 

I am fortunate to have a deep bench of friendships, but everyone is wrestling with their own struggles. I do not see enough of anyone. 

Some have taken very traditional career paths. They have built skills and knowledge around a long-term goal of a role they want. They have a clear picture of where they want to be. Others respond to choices life presents, as life presents them... still building, but with less premeditation. Some choose incredibly simple lives, massively reducing what they spend and living more contemplatively. Others have chosen noble professions, but are grappling with financial struggles. 

Some people’s paths are harder to identify with, because there is insufficient overlap. 6 degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. A chain of “friends of friends”. The further along that chain, the harder it can be to understand other people’s decisions. This is true even of immediate friends with no chain to obscure. 

We make different choices, and our choices frame future choices.

Red Pill on Blue Pill

Points of Contrast

The entry ticket of the community you are a part of goes up if the choices the collective choices they have made were good business ideas. This can limit the ideas you can choose to focus on if you want to be a part of those communities. To eat in the restaurants people eat in, send children to certain schools, or live where and how they live. 

It is easy to say, “don’t judge yourself based on your peers”, but it can get more practical than that. Going to visit a friend for dinner, you can’t help but see their comparative lifestyle. It is more challenging to see the whole picture. We only see what is conspicuous, and process the immediate points of comparison we notice or pay attention to. It can be difficult to hold on to your values and choices when spending decisions become joint decisions because of peer pressure. 

Part of stilling waves of anxiety, is realising that each wave is not the only wave. Each thought is not the only thought. There are others. The thing you are aware of in a particular moment will pass. 

When I stopped working and starting writing and thinking about non-monentary things, I realised that most of my friends were happy, but they had made a wide variety of choices with trade offs and consequences. Every opportunity you take, closes the door to other opportunities. Keeping all your options open can mean not actually experiencing any of those options. We can’t do everything. 

The other realisation I had was that there are a whole bunch of people who aren’t even in the position to question their choices. What can happen if you are solely focused on financing your own choices, is you can forget about the hills in Umlazi. Other bubbles are out of sight and out of mind. The nature of global apartheid is that not everyone has the same opportunity.

Pulses Ripple

Reality is complex. We can’t simplify it as much as we would want to. We can create structures and simplifying stories to help us make decisions, but there needs to be an acknowledgment that we don’t all live the same lives. 

Our realities bump. Understanding requires work. No one has the capacity to understand in every way. We end up having to trust each other. Trust each other to go down different paths, while figuring out a way to stay in connection. 

We can be right on the edge of human knowledge. If there is no connection back, even if someone expands those boundaries, no one else will apply the learnings. 

There is a big tension between applied knowledge and theoretical knowledge. Opening questions up and closing down options to make tangible decisions. Sometimes by going down theoretical rabbit holes, you lose touch with other people. You live in a different place even if you are physically in the adjacent spot. 

Because of randomness, ambiguity, and complexity, we don’t and can’t understand how everything is connected. We don’t and can’t know all the consequences of our decisions. We need to build in feedback loops, and capacity to understand the impact we are having on the world. 

Actions matter. Actions have consequences. Consequences have consequences. We pulse, and our pulse ripples. The ripple is too complex for us to understand. We have to let go of that. 

We are here. We are part of the world. Making peace with that complexity is difficult and important.

Waves Matter

While the idea of meritocracy might focus on the best skills and knowledge, it misses other components of money-making. Specifically, capital and containers. 

Capacity for risk is a form of strength. The way you view risk can depend on how much capital you have behind you, and the risks YOU can take. It is not, and never will be, the same for everybody. 

We don’t start from scratch every day. We don’t want to start from scratch every day. On the surface, you might have “alignment of interests” where the surface noise is “shared” by everybody. It is not the same if you have deep support networks. 

That is why a lot of entrepreneurs are just rich kids with safety nets. It is not that they are more willing to take risks. It is that the consequences are not the same. History matters. 

Yoga might be about stilling waves, but it acknowledges the waves matter. Waves are karma. We all have a history to work through during our life. The sum of past karma. The results of current decisions and actions. Our ability to act, relies on acting mattering. An impact on the next generation. On those around us. Positive and negative. 

That is why it is so important to be aware of intended and unintended consequences. If you genuinely want to have the ability to see underlying merit, you have to be aware of context.

acknowledge the waves

Understanding Connections

What we do, matters. What has been done, matters. History plays out its consequences. For me, being (randomly) born in South Africa at the tail end of Apartheid had, and has, consequences. 

I come from a family where politics was discussed, but I can’t remember the Rubicon speech. I was just starting to form memories, and that was not one of them. I do know it was a difficult time. 

As a kid, you are really just aware of being a kid. You gradually gain consciousness of the world that you are in. In the first few years after you are born, you don’t even have the place to store your memories. You are just experiencing. It takes time to realise that your parents are separate individuals from you. 

We all go through the terrible twos and tantrums, and discovering our Ego. Discovering that we don’t necessarily have to listen to all the instructions we are given. There is a process too of realising that there is a world beyond your family. A world beyond your school. A world beyond the groups that you are a part of. Gradually we get the chance of understanding our place, and our history. 

There is a concept called the “veil of ignorance”. What rules for the game would you create if you didn’t know which character you were going to be? 

I was 14 in 1994 when the first democratic elections took place in South Africa. Part of grappling with my story has been the existential crisis of being a white male South African. Without falling into the trap of self-flagellation, what is the balance between playing the cards you have and understanding your connection to the rest of the world?

Me, in a group in the year Apartheid ended

Being Reduced

My primary objection to hand-to-mouth living and anyone being reduced to a productive asset, is the inability to see each other. Whether it is reduction to money, muscles, and sperm. Or reduction to feeding, caring, and reproduction. Breadwinner. Homemaker. I don’t object to any of the things that need doing. Just to us being defined by the things that need doing, or forgetting the reason why we are doing the things that “need” doing. 

You may get marriages where the couple never see each other, but one pays the bills and the other holds their world together. Some would call that a good team. I call BS. Unless that is truly what you want… then I have no problem with that. Other than the risk involved if that world gets bumped. That is not what I want. 

I love deep conversations. I love “democratic goods”… things that are valuable but cost very little because they are plentiful rather than scarce. It’s not that I don’t like scarce goods or see their value. It is more the trade-offs that take the shine off. How much time do I sacrifice for those things? What conversations do I miss out on? What are the unintended consequences of choosing to work for that thing? What we do matters. 

Our actions have consequences. Consequences connect and build. Constraints, boundaries, and agreements create and destroy the worlds we experience, and how we see each other.

Reducing the Sauce

Feeling the Choices

Local markets should be more responsive to changes in preference, because they are able to respond to tacit knowledge. The stuff we can’t put into words. The stuff we don’t always understand ourselves. Our inconsistency. Our moods. 

Local markets mean relationship building and consequences. Huge markets become more abstract. If you sell someone something that isn’t a good deal for them (because you need/want the money) and it affects them badly, size matters. In a huge market, you disappear in search of the next sucker. In a local market, you still have to engage with the people. 

Local forces commitment, recognising that what we do matters. The boundaries between client, colleague, friends, and family blur. It gets complicated. Dealing with strangers is cleaner. It is transactional. Local and intimate means getting involved in the nitty gritty. Local means we experience the results of each other's decisions. Local means wrestling with issues. 

Standardization can give comfort. Where you do venture away from local to explore, some recognition is useful. When you (think you) recognise something, you don’t have to give it thought. Conscious choice is hard. 

Daniel Kahneman talks of “thinking fast and slow”. You want to embody a lot of decisions and make them fast. Jonathan Haidt talks of our rider (head) and elephant (body/habits). We think the rider is in control, but it is mostly the elephant. 

To embody and relax, we have to trust. It is hard to trust when you haven’t done the necessary wrestling to deep soak shared agreement.

International Standardization

Soaking Deep

We don’t necessarily have to understand our engagement with the world. Yoga talks of three states of consciousness. The three semi-circles you see in the Om symbol. 

The knowledge that is going on in our heads. The embodied knowledge that has soaked so deep, that it is part of our behaviours and habits (which we may or may not even be aware of). The free-flowing knowledge that is in our dream state... our state of processing and connecting and imagining. Our hallucinating walk around the way we experience the world. Where symbols and moments blur. 

Revealed preference is when the combination of our three states leads us to act in a way that may be different from what we say we want. You might say you like little local coffee shops that are different. Then buy your fix at Starbucks. You might say you like independent bookstores. Then buy your books online. 

As creatures, our behaviours are not always consistent with what we say we want. This opens us to manipulation if the way things are framed can change our decisions. The same information with a different story can lead us down a different path. This raises the importance of being able to pause, step back, and reflect on the choices we are making. 

Actions have consequences. Consequences compound. Connecting to each other and soaking deep into future options.

Om Symbol

Point of Focus

There are consequences to the numbers we use. Yogis will argue it is only possible to think of one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is what the body does. The mind can only hold one idea. Then embody it through repetition. 

Our attention might jump around a lot, but it can’t be focused on more than one point. Which is why meditation is often the practice of thinking about your breathing. Breathing is a safe anchor to refocus on. 

In stark contrast, if you simplify everything down to a single number for return, and a single number for risk, dividing the one by the other to be your point of focus, you are going to make some poor decisions that ignore long-term consequences. 

If you make the underlying assumption that opportunities to recycle your high return decisions into high returning alternatives is going to remain a possibility. If what you are consuming is less than what you are creating, then that is sustainable. Then you can do it forever. 

If you aren’t considering the unintended consequences of your choices, and what lies outside the numbers, and outside your plan, then you are going to run out of breath when the air disappears.

Trataka - Meditation on a flame

Bold because Secure

We see based on the experiences we have had. We build an interpretation of the world. We filter the noise and interact with it as best we can. Which makes a feedback cycle essential. We can not help but constantly make mistakes unless we either don’t do anything, or don’t venture very far from what we know we can hold onto. Boldness is built on nurtured insecurities. Boldness is built on a capacity to not only confirm what you already know. With security and a feedback loop, we can act in micro-ambitious ways. Have a go. See what happens. If you have confidence that you have the capacity to unwind mistakes, depending on the unintended consequences, you can be more adventurous. If you are wrapped in fear, you will seek perfection that doesn’t exist, before you act. You will seek the correct way. If you accept that your way is just an interpretation, you can move. Embrace a sense of wildness, and diversity of attempts in which beauty exists. Where we can be open to the chaos of noise, silent periods, bright colours, dull colours, contrast, light, dark, and in all of that find the bits that resonate with us. 

Bold

(because you are secure)

 

Repeated Choices

Life is a series of choices based on the options we are given. Where we end up depends in part on luck, in part on where we started, and in part on how consciously we play our part. A physical demonstration of this is the Galton Board. It illustrates the idea of the normal distribution. Even though there is a lot of randomness in the world, a step or two back often reveals a pattern. A wide variation for the individual, but a lot more predictability around central points. You get distributions of results. You get extremes. Our news and stories tend to focus on the extremes, and pay less attention to long-term averages and normal people. With a Galton Board, a ball will fall down, and it will go left or right, left or right, left or right. Facing repeated decisions. The situations we are in and the choices we make carry Karma. Choices have consequences. There are sometimes opportunities to correct mistakes but you have to work through historic consequences. What we do matters. History matters. We don’t all have (or want) the same choices, but we can increase the set of tools we have to have a degree of autonomy over what lies in front of us. 

Galton Board

Rippling Consequences

Westworld explores how others might have a better understanding of you than yourself. The chance, if we aren’t paying attention, that other people can see what we can’t see if they are detached and observant. In “Sapiens” & “Homo Deus”, Yuval Harari questions how willing we will be to work with artificial intelligence and things that watch us. Virginia Postrel talks about tacit knowledge in “The Future and Its Enemies”. Stuff we understand without knowing we understand. The driving force behind Adam Smith’s invisible hand. You don't need central decision-makers making complex decisions. You want to drive choice down to where the knowledge lies. We don't necessarily understand ourselves, but we are still the best place to make our decisions. Attention doesn’t scale. Someone understanding us better than we understand ourselves relies on deep listening and care. Local markets with ultra-local decision-making empowers people to make decisions. Information feeds up through the paths that people choose. Through the impact of their actions. Rippling consequences of meaning creation. It doesn't matter if we don't understand this in watered-down averages and stereotypes. It does matter to the intimate relationships that wrestle with understanding. 

Ripple Marks in Ancient Sandstone

Choosing a Level

You need to choose the level of consciousness that you want to live at. There is simplicity in just accepting the rules and doing what you're told. Like plugging in your destination on GPS versus studying the map in advance. There are definitely places I have driven multiple times that I would not be able to get to without help, because I have chosen to switch that bit of thinking off. There is simplicity in accepting your role and the pre-laid path from the menu you were given. That is fine if you enjoy what you have been given on the menu. It is less confusing. There are less options. You don’t have to think about it. You can focus on something else. When we decide that something is important, that is us projecting that it is important to us. For me, autonomy and consent are important. That makes it difficult, because you have to unpack everything and that is messy. That mess is a choice, and choices have consequences. 

Levelling Mountains

 

Decisions have Consequences

“The Man in the High Castle” looks at what how the world would have been like if the Second World War turned out differently. If Germany and Japan had conquered America and the rest of Europe. Even that kind of scenario (where we have a clear historical story of good winning out over evil), there were still moments of joy that happened in that alternate universe, that wouldn't have happened otherwise.  

Part of autonomy and consent is that decisions have consequences. Choices and events open up, and close down, histories and futures. Making peace with this idea that we have different options is a challenge. With an intricate web of ripple effects. What we do matters. To us and to others. 

I do not believe in pure equality. That is not autonomy. It would strip the world of its complexity, ambiguity, and randomness. If everyone had exactly the same experience, we would be controlled. It feels like that would be fair. But it would restrict us.

Intricate Web of Decision Making

Actions have Consequences

Karma Yoga is one of the four paths to stilling the waves of the mind. Karma means action. The other three are Bhakti (love/devotion), Raja (meditation), and Jnana (knowledge or intellect). Part of reducing anxiety is understanding how you are wired, and plotting a very bespoke practice that works for you. My understanding of Karma is that actions have consequences. Even though the world is random, complicated, and ambiguous… even the yogis believe in some cause and effect. The waves knocking us around are a function of both current free will and past human action that set the circumstances. Sanchita Karma are the accumulated actions of the past. History matters. Paarabdha Karma are the past actions you unpack in your life. You can change the circumstances. Kiryamana Karma are consequences of your current actions you experience immediately. Each day matters. Aagami Karma are the seeds you plant that affect you or others later. Our actions impact others. Like Fundamental Investing, the idea of Karma is that what we do matters. We have free will. It is just hard, and contextual. We have to do the deep work.

Continual Process of Unpacking

Choices have Consequences

I studied money partly because I hated it. Not money itself, because money isn’t a thing. Money is a communication tool. Mostly I hated the unchosen constraints and impact on relationships. Money fights. Money anxiety. Money in the driving seat. There are various stories of Alexander the Great coming across a Yogi on a rock. One trying to conquer, one working on acceptance. Life is about choices, and choices have consequences. Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Personally, I would rather focus my energy on the good ideas that are terrible business ideas. But this reality dictates that we at least have to tip our hats to the world of supply and demand. Where price isn’t value, but a sorting mechanism shifting things you can count and control. If you learn to understand risk, planning, and investment, you can gradually still the waves and choose your constraints. Conscious of the consequences, but with a point of focus.

Map of Alexander's Empire and Route

Wary of Force

A lot of people work best under pressure. When they have to. When they are in a corner. I am the opposite. I don’t like myself in a corner under time pressure when I become very task orientated. When the goal is victory at all costs. There are two cornerstone biblical stories I don’t identify with at all. The first is the binding and sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham because “God wills it”. The ultimate loss of perspective and parking of a moral compass. When obedience trumps consequences. Pure play child abuse. The second is the story of Job. Where God and Satan have a bet of whether Satan can turn Job against God by making his life awful. The ultimate abuse of the gift of unconditional love. I avoid corners. I would rather internalise the discipline required and chip away every day than be forced into situations without time and space. The day before an exam, I want to be off to the movies to clear my head. If a client suddenly changes their requirements the evening before a meeting, I would rather be fresh than pull an all-nighter. Presence requires time and space. Be wary of forced actions and decisions.

"The Sacrifice of Isaac" Caravaggio

Shifting Focus

You may not realise it, but you have a problem. I can solve that problem. There is no one else who can. Manufactured inadequacy. Projected confidence. Illusionary exclusivity. There is a reason why wealth is a team sport created in bubbles. If you genuinely care about the person, and your lives are connected, then creating a problem to extract wealth makes no sense. If you have a relationship with a person, it becomes impossible to hide that you are as confused and incompetent at most things as the rest of us. That you are just doing your best. If you care about someone, you stop looking for someone “better” to replace them, because the key is time spent. The person matters. Nepotism, Hereditary Privilege, Patronage, Clubs, and other forms of anti-Meritocracy are incentives. They shift the performance spotlight to a group bigger than ourselves. They make room for vulnerability. Family, children, friends, and community. They also have unintended consequences. I don’t know the answer, but the question is how to see real problems, be honest about our ignorance, and see the strengths in others that are not ours.

"American Progress" John Gast (1872)