Seven Invocations
1. Memories
Old age brings certain gifts, as long as we are open to receiving them. For me one of these gifts is sudden and unexpected recollections from a past fast-receding from temporal view. Now and again, yet increasingly with each passing week, shards of memories long forgotten break surface with astounding precision. I am able to observe aspects of my past self with rapt fascination. The pattern is always the same. A sound, scent, or some other sensation triggers a hiatus in what I happen to be doing. Nebulous mists clear to reveal vaguely familiar shapes before intimate details mob me and stop me in my tracks.
I had such an experience yesterday while watching a new movie. Greyhound tells the story of an inexperienced World War II US Navy captain, played by Tom Hanks, who must protect an Allied convoy of supply ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean while being hunted by Nazi U-boat wolf packs. Towards the end of the movie Tom Hanks sinks to his knees, giving thanks to his God that he and his crew survived the ordeal. Instantly I realized what I was viewing was a mirror image of a long-buried childhood experience.
Having embraced Buddhism at the age of 13, casting aside the Anglican Christianity in which I had been raised, I had also inadvertently purged most memories relating to that time. Only now I remembered...
Each evening as a child my mother taught me to pray on my knees to a benevolent Jesus. A kindly soul by all accounts, but one who stubbornly refused to make himself known to me in spite of all my efforts. Nonetheless from the age of eight, whether at home or in the school dormitory, I knelt and prayed. My petition was simple, and it was the same each evening. God, look after mummy. Make me a good boy. And when you see my daddy please tell him that I love him. Amen.
At that stage, you see, all I knew was that my father had suddenly vanished from my life. As my solitary hero he left a vacuum that could never be filled. I would not discover the truth of what happened to him for another 37 years - after I received an aerogram mailed from Eastbourne. Hand-written, barely legible in an unschooled scrawl. A message from a stranger. My father. In this note an awkwardly expressed affection, along with an intimation he would like to see me.
The letter arrived too late. I would not see my father again. There was no grieving at the news of his death. I had been through that torment decades before. There was no pain left. But the instant I realized how I used to pray so dutifully every day was shockingly poignant.
How did that daily ritual affect me? What good did my prayers do? Did they bring relief and comfort? Or did they simply prolong ingrained sorrow and uncertainties? What bearing did the routine have on my state of mind and emotional development? Was it to blame for how I feel today about the covert menace of entrenched religious righteousness?
2. Righteousness
I do not know. I can only answer those questions in the vaguest manner. But there is another point to all of this. As a Buddhist I try to live by tenets which resonate from the spiritual praxis acquired throughout my life – particularly through grief and disappointment. This means not just tolerating those whose attitudes do not accord with mine, even when they detest me and everything I value, but trying to find ways to accommodate alternative beliefs. Humility. Doing what I can to be a worthy ancestor. Showing compassion for others who struggle. Mindful reflection preceding action. And a deep love for the sacredness of life.
Most importantly though, these tenets have taught me not to impose my beliefs on others. My stance is as simple as that naive prayer from my childhood. In spite of our heritage, acquired status, and superfluous titles, nobody enters this world more or less inferior than anyone else. We are all born into conditions over which we have no control and very little sway. Indeed the only significant disparities between a monarch and a pauper are the inheritance of wealth, the delusions arising from that accident of birth, and deference shown by those who hope to profit from their fawning behaviour.
What we are able to accomplish during our brief lifetime here differs only inconsequentially. Expecting nothing in return for an act of kindness, offered in a spirit of generosity by a poor person towards a stranger, or from a child to an elder, is worth far more than a truckload of philanthropic dollars distributed by billionaires who often want to justify the privileges wealth brings by feeling virtuous about their good deeds, reaping respect from their peers and, if possible, getting some kind of a tax concession.
Eventually we are all condemned to an end-game over which there can be no appeal. I have no right to judge others when I cannot read their story, feel their suffering, appreciate their circumstances, or truly put myself in their shoes. To do so is hubris of the worst kind.
3. Hubris
Yet by and large our society continues to revolve around entitlement - particularly individuals who, having been born into, or acquired, wealth and power assume they have dispensation to decide how the rest of us should live. Even within the epitome of democratic societies, such as the Westminster model in the UK, where ordinary citizens are supposedly franchised with that choice, born-to-rule Etonians and Wykemists, primed from their earliest years into narcissistic levels of self-belief, often run the show.
This assumption of entitlement also flows over into corporate management. Business schools happily churn out old-style executives who are encouraged to apply such hubris - based upon a plethora of conflicting excuses justifying why others should heed their orders in the warped belief that status or personal charm bestows upon them an obligation to instruct others - and to inflict penalties when those they aim to inspire are insufficiently enthused.
Likewise, organizations managed by armies of freshly-minted MBA’s still incorrectly assume that controlling people is as easy as applying statistical methods and software development routines to improve processes and manage projects. This is the industrial-military method applied uncritically. Indeed, even the most recent management fads are bound up with these mechanistic derivatives.
The imposition of pointless, mind-numbing, often humiliating work today is the result of such hubris, along with the fragmentation of knowledge which occurs when we compartmentalize organizations for reasons of efficiency and control. Up to 30 per cent of all work can be sorted into categories where it is impossible to find adequate explanations for its existence. In fact, many jobs seem to be designed purely to keep us busy doing something. Anything!
And while technology has advanced to the extent that many jobs are superfluous, and a 15-hour working week is both feasible and has proven to be beneficial on a number of occasions, the puritanical work ethos that demands we labour for 40 hours or more seems to be deep-seated. The result is a plague of pointless drudgery in an ocean of unrelenting tedium.
4. Tedium
It is not surprising that such drudgery should lead to high levels of disengagement. The kind of managerial feudalism that persists in many corporations today is dispiriting. It puts people off work, emboldens lethargy, and generates mental health problems. According to Gallup only 13 per cent of all employees find their work engaging. Meaningless work, inadequate resources, a chronic misuse of talent, and a lack of trust in those appointed to manage, are the major causes for such disenchantment.
But if we examine the 20 per cent who are actively disengaged, one major factor stares us in the face: it is the many obstacles self-motivated and creative individuals face when taking the initiative, experimenting, or attempting to dispense with age-old protocols they know to be hindering productivity, that is the problem.
Irrespective of the industry, market, location or size of the company, it is hubris, together with the illusion of power or control, that invariably stands in the way of exceptional performance. Conventionally managed organizations will have none of this of course. Company boards and executive teams alike, operating within mainstream corporate power structures, get too much pay, preening attention, and other incentives to contemplate changing their command and control mindsets. Why would they change when they believe this practice works?
Believe it or not, even when agile, adaptive, or navigational approaches are regularly used by the most shrewd and forward-looking enterprises, an unhealthy preoccupation with achieving targets, as well as paying undue attention to critical success factors, performance indicators, appraisals, and a host of other distractions, can deter teamwork, put a brake on the learning metabolism of the organization, and compromise the productivity potential of the entire enterprise.
It is not difficult to eliminate tedium from work – assuming a flat structure where talented, self-motivated individuals are able to take risks, collaborate and experiment. Many entrepreneurial startups can rapidly scale-up their 'minimum viable products' by using liquid structures where the dynamic flows of information and activities, lightning-fast decisions, peripatetic teams, and fractal leadership, interact transparently.
Working for companies like Valve, Zappos, Tik Tok, Atlassian, Canva, Legal Monkeys, Go1, or Aurecon, for example, is purportedly intrinsically inspiring. In open environments, purpose and passion drives effort while leadership is about coordination and management morphs into collaboration. Work becomes a fearless, fluid adventure, where no one is there to tell you what to do or to reprimand you when you make a mistake. You might not think it impractical to impose these kinds of open structures in companies demanding the precise coordination of complex activities, such as companies involved in airplane construction, for example. Likewise, imposing management orthodoxies in innovative organizations like those above would also be sheer folly.
5. Folly
The British physicist Steven Hawking asserted that greed and stupidity would be the downfall of humanity. Although I am hesitant to contradict such a proposition, I venture to suggest that love and compassion are the two things that might yet save us. Nevertheless, even that small step will require us to see things differently, accept new ways of relating to each other and nature, and to develop a new moral consciousness.
Actually, the more haunting question for me is whether or not we Sapiens are wise enough to survive our undeniable ingenuity to endure our own recklessness. This was the question that provoked the founding of the Centre for the Future. It is a question that continues to disturb me. Examples of extreme stupidity (as opposed to ignorance) are all around us of course, but none more so than in the indefensible ways we choose to relate to each other and to nature.
Individuals can be very smart. This defines the spirit of entrepreneurship. Besides, almost all successful entrepreneurs consult widely in order to scale their ideas collaboratively. But when even the most intelligent people get together in board rooms and parliaments, any collective wisdom we might have assumed can vanish in a confusion of ego, dogma, risk aversion, and a tendency to rebrand what is already known rather than venturing into new realms of inquiry.
Part of our collective stupidity derives from an innate self-confidence - boosted these days by an unprecedented capability, via social media on mobile devices, to connect with and interact with what everyone else is thinking or doing. This coupling can lead us into situations where it is easy to assume our opinions are equally valid to those of others - even when it is only based on disputable feelings. Excessive self-confidence can be a folly in this case. It can nurture the notion that whimsical sentiments are equivalent to expertise and evidence. For example, your point of view about the seriousness of climate change might be based on scientific data from a panel of experts, whereas I have simply accepted the attitude of a celebrity I happened to see on television who gave the impression he knew what he was talking about. The two are not comparable. But try persuading someone of that who lacks the ability to think critically.
When emotionally amplified, this coupling of confidence with connection can also give rise to situations in which we are offended or outraged when our opinions are challenged. That too is a problem because both emotions open us up to easy manipulation. Unscrupulous people will always be ready to take advantage of that.
Certainly it is the case that stupid, outraged, and easily offended people are more convinced of the accuracy of their views than smarter people who always tend to have doubts. Moreover, because of our predilection for educating by fragmenting knowledge to fit highly specialized work structures, rather than the other way around, we have created conditions that amply demonstrate the hazards inherent in allowing this to continue.
Take science, for example, which is one of the best ways we have of understanding the world in which we live. Science is inevitably provisional, as is truth. Yet stupid people seek certainty in science. Once having found their truth, they then latch onto it with unwavering passion. Or take military strategy. It constantly amazes me that intelligent conversations on this topic, with very smart people, can so misguidedly ignore key underlying hypotheses they use to project their case for military intervention. The lesson is simple. If the only instrument you possess is a hammer, every issue will appear to be a nail.
The penchant many of us are developing for trusting our instincts over objective data partially explains why incumbent plutocrats find the conception of a world where conflict, wars, and other forms of violence exist, utterly acceptable. In their world it is legitimate to bully the weak, rob the poor, threaten those with whom they disagree, and assassinate those whom they fear.
As for ordinary citizens like us, we have meekly tolerated this state of affairs for decades. It endures because of our apathy and a distinct lack of foresight. We stand idly by, paying no attention to constant warnings that the breakdown of our climate and the unravelling of so many natural ecosystems must be treated as a global emergency, for example. We continue to elect corrupt and uncaring officials who stigmatize and stereotype the homeless and the poor as parasites and workers as lesser mortals. And all the time we put up with this, cocooning ourselves in a zone of delusion where our ultimate purpose has become to own more and more stuff we do not really want. In effect we are all contributing to a world in which the gradual emaciation of any moral or spiritual imperative is becoming normalized.
6. Normal
Normalcy is in the news – as in talk of the 'new' normal – whatever that might mean in what is looming to be a decade of disruption. Most public attention at the moment is focused on the current pandemic and speculation concerning a 'post-pandemic' world. Given the likelihood of further highly virulent outbreaks from known and novel viruses, continuing disturbances in the workplace from digitalization, increasing geopolitical tensions on a global scale, and the climate chaos we have been predicting for so long, I would have thought it highly imprudent to frame the various conditions we are facing in terms of a post-anything world!
Although the universal public response to COVID-19, rather than the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself, has led to the most fundamental socio-economic breakdown experienced by our generation, it is still unclear as to what extent we will be able to carry on with life as usual - least of all what we should take with us, and leave behind, from the period prior to the outbreak, when so many of our life-critical systems were already beginning to stutter and fail.
What the coronavirus is doing in such spectacular fashion is to reveal the deep fault-lines and systemic fragilities existing in the world-system we have carefully crafted. It is as though nature has given us this virus as a dress rehearsal for what we can expect going forward – the chance to bring a regenerative consciousness to bear on human activities.
Human brains possess a great deal of plasticity, so there is little doubt we can adapt to new circumstances once the fog has cleared, as long as conditions on the planet remain conducive to life, which is by no means certain. But far too many of the current batch of business owners, politicians and industry leaders, eager to see a return to business-as-usual, remain trapped in the mental coordinates of a world that no longer exists. They yearn to return to the comfort of a familiar past, over which they assumed they had at least a semblance of control. Wrong!
The truth is becoming clearer each day that passes. The longer the current crisis persists, and much depends on how soon we can acquire herd immunity, presumably through an effective universal vaccination campaign, the greater the likelihood we will underestimate the damage being done to the social fabric of society and, as a consequence, the degree to which massive change is needed. Then again, if it is bad for more affluent societies, the potential collapse of most economic activity will be catastrophic for the least-developed, most vulnerable nations.
Key questions, too, concern the nature of the emerging world order. How will the international community treat an increasingly assertive, yet intrinsically problematic China, and a divided US at the point of civil conflict? Is China becoming a more constructive player in world affairs, and less to be feared, than the US? Are we likely to witness the unravelling of financial and trade globalization in the near future? Will national interests still dominate global conventions or will cooperation finally shatter the policy gridlock? Will economic integration be a fading dream as the relatively free movement of people across national borders ceases? Will we retreat further into the comfort of past practices?
And what about business? Will retail malls, the daily commute into the city office, the law firm, the school yard and the university campus fade into the memory? And if so, will innovation be unleashed in sufficient amounts to replace these institutions, delivering striking improvements in productivity where they are most needed? I must admit this speculation of massive change and its consequences is making me feel nostalgic for the world we might be leaving behind and to which we are so attached.
7. Attachment
Nothing is permanent. Even scientific knowledge is fleeting, while nostalgia is a seductive liar. Attachment to the material world and old habits such as those mentioned above are ultimately of little consequence. In the end, though, the manner in which we are able to deal with our various attachments will continue to shape and define us.
As I grow older my attachment to material objects is declining in alignment with my pursuit of a more peaceful, less hectic, existence. Of course, that quest has been fast-tracked by Covid-19. Even in this remote part of Thailand it is impossible to escape the aura of fear that has us in its grasp. Here though, in the rural seclusion of our food forest and rice farm, I am surrounded not just by nature but by my books, my art, and music in abundance. To lose these would be a great sacrifice. My MacBook, too, has become the repository of ideas, feelings and projects stretching back over three decades. I would not want to lose it. But if I did I would cope.
In terms of belonging, the affection I feel for humanity and for this planet our home, grows more resolute each day - while a steadfast detachment from the deeds of greedy, powerful, self-centered individuals, and the ways in which they have designed systems for their own benefit, at least gives me the courage to do the work I do.
I think back on the memories of my childhood with a growing warmth and appreciation. Even those recollections that are still cocooned in sadness and grief, like the loss of my father.
What I have found exceedingly difficult to deal with is my attachment to these memories along with some highly personal artefacts from the past. Many years ago, an entire collection of my music, which had been recorded over a period of seven years, and which had been left in trust with one of my children, disappeared. There were no copies. After my initial fury had receded, and I managed to work through the grief and sense of personal loss, I felt as though a part of me had been rubbed out, leaving only a fading, blurred daguerreotype.
More recently I discovered several hand-written letters dating back half a century, have gone missing from an antique Chinese chest in which I keep my original scores and other assorted memorabilia. There was a pen and ink letter from Ted Hughes, responding to my setting of his poems Eros and King of Carrion, from this book Hawk in the Rain, that received its premiere at the Edinburgh Festival. And a couple of very brief notes to my mother from my teacher Nadia Boulanger, assuring her of my talent as a composer.
Such bits and pieces are irreplaceable. The sense of loss inevitably cuts deep, even when they remain intact in the memory and are assuaged through the lens of Buddhist practice.
Buddhism teaches us not to become too attached to things. Indeed, one of the four noble truths in Buddhist scriptures asserts desire and attachment to be the source of so much human suffering and dissatisfaction. I must confess that I still find this a difficult precept to live by and a dilemma I have constantly wrestled with. Most material possessions I found easy enough to discard. I never owned property until I was 70 years old, for example, though my fondness for books, contemporary art and music scores provides me with the greatest joy imaginable. Old age certainly brings gifts in its wake. As long as we are still open to receiving them.