The truth. Dumbledore sighed. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution. - J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Put on your seat belts, buckle up, and brace yourself. This essay is going to transgress my customary politeness.
I have always been fascinated by human fictions and falsehoods, along with unabashed assertions that lack any kind of validation. Especially puzzling to me are more fundamental blunders that are so readily accepted by society, can go seriously unchallenged more or less indefinitely, yet ultimately help shape the course of human destiny – for better or for worse.
What intrigues me most about this phenomenon is the speed at which fallacies and lies embed themselves as irrefutable facts or indispensable habits, the extent of their traction, and the unintended consequences they can bring about - not to dwell on the hostility with which any challenge to their legitimacy invariably elicits. Detractors are routinely written off as crazy, stupid - or far worse. I know. I have been there.
Since as long as I can remember I have been accused of being a heretic. Even as a callow, acne-scarred youth my opinions were most often interpreted as coming from the mind of an incurable, somewhat precocious, rebel whose contrarian views were often just beyond the bounds of acceptability. It is not a reputation I sought.
I recognized from the age of eleven that truths are temporary and, as a consequence, that everything I was being taught at school must automatically be of little relevance if it did not embody my own individual experience of the world. Later on I was politely asked to "relinquish" my scholarship at the Royal College of Music - that term being a euphemism for being kicked out. My mistake was to confront the Registrar about the poor quality of teaching at the College - possibly not the wisest of moves at a time when the concept of any academic institution being open to student feedback had yet to be invented!
It has always been a problem for me. Relentlessly curious, able to perceive several points of view on any issue, I have never been able to quietly accept versions of the truth that use weasel words to convey opinions or to declare positions that have no basis in fact - even when keeping quiet might have led to a less disquieting time, and greater riches.
Sometimes I cannot help myself. I hear the words spilling from my mouth before my mind slowly engages, imploring me to stop. By then it is too late - the damage has been done. I recall a dinner party held at a stately home in Melbourne in my honour. The conversation had veered towards the recent bush fires when a very vocal elderly doyenne asked me if I believed in climate change, because she had no doubt that it was manipulative nonsense and quite possibly a plot by China to rule the world. Too late to stop myself I blurted out that global heating was a matter of science, not belief, and that she must be as mystified by the fact that gravity kept her standing on terra firma instead of floating off into space. Her horrified look left me in little doubt that my credentials, previously impeccable, had taken a tumble.
My first book, published in 1993, was The Management Myth. In it I identified some of the more harmful assumptions, and mistakes subsequently made, particularly by members of the consulting fraternity, when designing organizations, management practices and work flows. Many errors exists in this space of course, some of them highly amusing, and almost all of them absurd in their own distinctive way.
An almost military fascination with hierarchies, agents being employed to recruit new staff from a brief, loosely based on a template, describing the profile of an ideal candidate, the illiteracy displayed by managers concerning engaging and inspiring people, the notion of a strategy being so secret that it is locked away in the CEO's bottom drawer, all struck me as being the fodder for an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
But management is not the only realm for finding untruths, errors and flawed ideas. They flourish almost everywhere a universal order is decreed. Philosophy, religion, science, politics, commerce, education, public health, and even the law - come to think of it especially the law - provide fertile ground for such bloopers. These are not errors of judgement or action but, far more fundamentally, of flawed thinking and the arcane mumbo-jumbo stemming from their creation that seems to give them even greater credence and potential longevity.
The great English philosopher Francis Bacon pointed to four categories of human error. He associated these with the cave (individuals), the tribe (human nature), the marketplace (human interaction), and the theatre (philosophical dogma).
I tire very quickly of inactivity. I am always on the go. Faced with the prospect of an entire evening devoted to doing absolutely nothing while on vacation recently in North Eastern Thailand I thought it might be amusing to pinpoint a few of the most damaging myths, the big lies if you will, in each of these categories.
So, at the risk of offending almost everyone on the planet in some form or other, including my family and friends, here are my top ten untruths for you to consider, in descending order of importance.
10. All human behaviour is predictable.
In the name of a supposedly scientific criterion of knowledge, scholars are berated for not predicting the end of the cold war, the rise of Islam, the current pandemic, and much else besides. Yet many natural sciences, including seismology and evolutionary biology, are not able to predict with accuracy either.
Human affairs themselves, even leaving aside matters of intention and impulse, allow too many variables for such calculation. We will never be in a position to predict with absolute certainty the outcome of a sporting contest, the trajectory of revolutions, the duration of a passion, or how long an individual will live. It is delusional to think that we can. Technology will help us get close. Foresight can help narrow the options. Ultimately, human behaviour is essentially unpredictable.
9. The world is speeding up.
No it is not. Although our perception of the speed of change might itself be changing - a condition which the elderly begin to notice as the inevitability of death draws near, and which accident victims, on the other hand, sense as a dramatic slowing down of everything surrounding them.
The notion that the world is speeding up is a favourite mantra of globalization theorists, passionate technocrats, pop futurists and management gurus. It confuses acceleration in some areas, such as the time it takes to transmit knowledge for example, with the fact that large tracts of human life continue to demand the same time as before: to conceive and bear a child, to grow up, to play a musical instrument, to digest a meal, to enjoy a joke, or read a poem. It takes the same time to fly from London to New York as it did forty years ago, to boil an egg, or to publish a book. Some activities – such as driving to work in a large city, getting through security in an airport, or dying with dignity - may actually take much longer.
Nor is technology to blame. New technologies inevitably disrupt practices, but they also warp our observations of speed and time. The accelerating rate of innovation, along with the heightened ambiguity this brings, adds to our intuition that life must be getting faster as a consequence. Constant streams of new inventions administer short, sharp shocks to lives more geared to incremental change.
This error also confuses reality with our perceptions of that reality and muddles, quite dangerously I think, the time needed for appropriate decision-making and action-taking by compressing both into an omnipresent here and now. Wise decisions about highly complex or systemic issues can take a considerable amount of time for reflection, whereas action, assuming adequate reflection has preceded it can, and often needs to be, rapid.
8. Capital and financial markets are a natural phenomenon that allow for the efficient allocation of resources.
No. I’m afraid not. This is an old chestnut but utter nonsense - unless, of course, you believe the world was created by the Dutch in the 17th Century. And how harmful such a view has become. The concept that market economies are natural features of society is a fabrication designed to exclude the consideration of alternatives. Markets are simply artificial constructions. Like everything else invented by humans, they are the product of particular mindsets and value systems in societies. They occur at a particular time, and are related explicitly to economic matters.
Nor are markets efficient allocators of goods. They disregard the expansive area of human activities that cannot be covered by monetary values - from education and the provision of public works, to human happiness and fulfillment.
To a great extent the notion of a pure market is also a fantasy. Oil and drugs, for example, the two most traded commodities in the contemporary world, show how political, social and cartel factors constantly interfere, override, and distort the workings of supply and demand which is the main theoretical pillar underpinning markets.
7. We have no need for history.
In recent decades, large areas of intellectual and academic life have jettisoned a concern with history. Yet it remains true that those who ignore history repeat it. And today we seem to be repeating history on so many different counts.
Almost everywhere we look, cases can be unearthed where even a scant appreciation of history would have urged caution or indicated the need for a different course of action. A study of the history of pandemics like the Spanish Flu of 1918, for example, might have led to a range of alternative strategies, rather than the punitive lockdown and mass quarantine options being applied almost universally in vain attempts to "defeat" COVID-19 today.
Nowhere is history needed more urgently than in the facilitation of international relations between sovereign states. While scanning for parallels and commonalities, in the form of an initial literature search, is an essential element in the pre-funding stages of innovation, this routine could be of value in any situation where the hypotheses, invention, ratification and enactment of strategy could potentially lead to conflict and carnage.
For example, the recycling of unacknowledged cold-war premises by George W. Bush's brutal incursions into Iraq amply illustrates the traps we can easily fall into if history goes unheeded. It goes without saying that truths ignored also lead to disaster. The Challenger space shuttle calamity, for example, could have been avoided if reports from technicians had been read, and if key personnel had not felt intimidated by the pressure to proceed with the launch in such freezing conditions.
History also teaches us that nothing is too big to fail. Take Lehman Brothers, for example, the fourth largest investment bank in the US before it filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Titanic, the Vasa, and the Tek Sing, three of the largest ships of their kind, were all supposed to be unsinkable. But due to errors in construction and management they suffered catastrophic wrecks leading to a massive loss of life.
6. The spread of English as a world language should be welcomed.
Yes and no. It is obviously of practical benefit that there is a common, functional, language for trade, and air traffic control, for example. But the domination of spoken English in the modern world has been accompanied by a tide of cultural arrogance that is debasing - a downgrading and neglect of other languages and cultures across the world, the general compounding of Anglo-Saxon political and social arrogance, and the introverted collapse of interest within English-speaking countries themselves in other peoples and languages. In sum, a triumph of banality over diversity.
5. The world's population problems can be solved without the use of condoms.
This is not only the most dangerous, but also the most criminal, error of modern thinking. Our planet is overwhelmed by an explosion in human numbers. While the education of women is critical, alongside family planning advice, and the ability to choose whatever measures they prefer in order to prevent unwanted births, so too are the devices available to assist population control. Condoms are preferable to all other contraceptive devices, including "the pill", in terms of their safety and effectiveness.
Millions of people will suffer, dying premature and humiliating deaths, as a result of poorly-informed policies pursued in this regard through the United Nations and related aid and public-health programs. Indeed, there is no need to ask where the most mass murderers of the 21st century are. We already know. And their addresses besides: the Lateran Palace, Vatican City, Rome, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC. Timely arrest and indictment would save many lives.
4. The world is divided into incomparable moral blocs, or civilizations.
This view has been aptly termed, by Ernest Gellner, liberalism for the liberals, cannibalism for the cannibals. Some values sets are (almost) universally shared by the human family as a whole (but not quite) and these are ingrained within the Occidental worldview.
Democracy has its fair share of adherents, as do the protection of human rights, defense of state sovereignty, and belief in the benefits of economic development. In most cases it is the cultural interpretation and practical implantation of these values that is disputed. It is these, too, that are evolving marginally different world-systems.
Most nations, whatever their social, political, or religious character, have signed the universalist United Nations declarations on human rights, starting with the 1948 universal declaration. Although China, which was a signatory to the 1998 affirmation, has yet to ratify its position. This is potentially significant given differences between the US and China and the different moral code underpinning the Oriental (or Sinic) worldview.
3. Diasporas have a legitimate role to play in national and international politics.
The notion that emigrant or diaspora communities have special insights into the problems of their homeland, or indeed a distinctive moral or political status with regard to them, is wholly unfounded. Emigrant ethnic communities almost always play a negative, backward, at once hysterical and obstructive, role in resolving the conflicts of their countries of origin. Armenians and Turks, Jews and Arabs and various strands of Irish, are prime examples on the inter-ethnic front, as are exiles in the United States in regard to resolving the problems of Cuba, or policymaking on Iran.
2. The only thing they understand is force.
This has been one of the guiding illusions of hegemonic and colonial thinking for several centuries. The oppressed peoples rarely accept the imposition of solutions by force. They revolt instead. It is the oppressors who, in the end, have to accept the verdict of force, as European empires did in Latin America, Africa and Asia and as the United States is doing in Afghanistan and Yemen today. The US hubris of "mission accomplished" when pulling out of Iraq in May 2003, has been followed by ignominy. It was inevitable.
1. Religion should again be allowed to play a role in political and social life.
From the evangelicals of the United States, to the followers of Popes, and to the Islamic jihadists of the Middle East, claims about the benefits of religion is one of the great, and all too little challenged, impostures of our time. Religious beliefs are a sophisticated form of superstition, nothing more than a sad fallacy, a form of insanity - except there is nobody standing by to point that out.
For centuries, those aspiring to freedom and democracy, be it in Europe or the Middle East, fought to push back the influence of religion on public life. Secularism cannot grant or guarantee freedom, but, against the claims of tradition and superstition, and the uses to which religion is put in contemporary political life, it is an essential bulwark.
With the possible exception of a more benign Buddhist philosophy, religion has been the greatest cause of tragedy, conflict and distress in this world. It should not be encouraged, but allowed to die a natural death.