Does Religion do good?

On holiday, I read “A little History of Religion” by Richard Holloway. I was glad I did. The book was a good read and very balanced in its approach. As on so many topics, I learned once again how sparse my own education and knowledge has been. I usually feel good about that, because it means there are so many more interesting things still to learn.

I know don’t why I have suddenly taken to anthologies, but I tried a second one on the same holiday, “Language of the Spirit, a brief introduction to classical music”, by Jan Swafford. This experience was not so rewarding, even though the book contained plenty of unfamiliar information and left the same feeling of awe and curiosity. To my taste, it just wasn’t so well written. Too much of the book became brief biographies of composers, often rather similar, sprinkled with descriptive passages about a couple of their works that used too many of the same adjectives. I’d have preferred more about how music itself evolved. And I have to confess to being rather annoyed by everything before Bach being glossed over in a handful of pages.

The book on religion benefitted greatly by examining many religions, and therefore finding what they all had in common and what led some to have greater success than others. Many themes emerged.

The foundation of all religion concerns two questions that humans have pondered ever since their brains had the capacity to think. The questions are related and are “why are we here?” and “what happens to us after we die?” We are not content with banal answers such as “we just are” and “nothing” so we search for alternatives. Religions usually form when a prophet, someone claiming to receive messages from beyond our everyday comprehension, convinces others of the veracity or importance of something he (usually he) has heard.

Though the author is careful not to judge too harshly, and indeed was an Episcopalian bishop before resigning to take more humanist positions, but put this simple way religion does seem rather silly. The world is full of people claiming special powers, and we usually give them short shrift. Some remarkable things have happened through history, miracles really, though that is not really surprising when we consider how long and deep history has been and how weird things happen to all of us every day.

The next question that comes through when comparing religions is to ask why some stick and others don’t. Here we start to see how religion is interlinked with politics, indeed could almost be seen as the same as politics. To gain any following, the prophet has to have some charisma and a message that fits the moment. Usually, parts of that message are a challenge to established religious and political leaders, so there is a struggle, often violent.

Then, one a religion starts to gain a foothold, organization is key, just as it would be for a new business. Holloway is brilliant and dispassionate about this. In his discussion of Christianity, he writes less about Jesus and more about Paul, whose energy and organizational skills gave the new religion solid roots and a chance to endure. I had not considered this before. Christianity got its structures, rules and marketing message in place, part of which is to establish a power structure that people are prepared to follow. Indeed, Catholicism has generally played the organizational game brilliantly throughout its history, so much so that for hundreds of years the pope was the most powerful political figure on the planet.

It was interesting to read of the similarities and differences between religions. Eastern religions see time as a long series of circles, while Abrahamic ones envision a straight line. Some religions draw strength from being closed, and others from being open and accepting of converts. Most have a set of practices that make sense for any community that wants to sustain, such as honesty and looking out for others. But some, notably the Chinese ones, have how to live this life as the primary focus, while others are more about preparing for what comes after death. Reading about Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism drew me towards the Chinese religions, and I would like to study them more.

The other factor that came through in the book as a repeating feature is how the initial principles of a religion tend to conflict with the organization required to sustain it, or at least with the tendencies of leaders. All three Abrahamic religions started when a prophet railed against the way established religion had departed from its principles. But then each time the principles get relaxed again once the new religion has become settled.

Again, Catholicism is the most glaring example. I sense this tension every time I go to mass and hear the gospel. Two of the most basic themes of Jesus were acceptance of all others and rejection of greed. But our prayers only really focus on other Christians, and the Vatican resides in splendour and its hierarchy usually places veneration of itself above humility. Christ would find plenty of moneychangers in today’s temples.

Historical examples from Catholicism are even more hypocritical. Crusades led to immense suffering. The practice of indulgences led to Luther. The justifications for a pope, celibate priests and a male only priesthood are thin.

It is possible to follow the journey Holloway must have taken from being a bishop to an agnostic. There are two parts, one about faith and the other about benefits.

Faith, which Holloway defines in language including acceptance of uncertainty, is the trump card of religions. Going back to the original two questions, we are inclined to believe something, and we want to be on the right team. There is a great incentive to stick with the team we were born to. Isn’t it amazing how almost all Poles believe Christ to be the son of God, yet Saudi’s credit Mohammed as the true pointer to Allah while Indian’s believe in many Gods and reincarnation? Hardly anyone changes team. Thinking hard about this can only add to doubts that any of the teams really have the answers to the initial questions about where we come from and where we are going.

Then, when we see how humanity continues to contaminate nearly all religions, thinkers might be pulled still further away. What can be the benefit of institutions that move so far from their founding principles and lead to such terrible behaviour?

This leads to the question I have asked myself before, about whether religion has had net benefits or costs to humanity. I see the benefits, in terms of the selfless and humble creeds, the good works (the Catholic Church is the most effective NGO on the planet), on the inspiration for human brilliance and also in the hope it offers people. But the hypocrisy is galling, as is all the destruction and intolerance religion has led to.

But, thanks to Holloway, I now come to a new conclusion. I don’t think the question makes sense any more, because a world without religion is a world without humanity. Religion is just one manifestation of our nature, and is really a dimension of politics. It is just how we are, good and bad, powerful yet powerless. Asking whether religion has been a good thing is like asking whether humanity has been. And, on balance, with all our flaws, we have been – at least for us.

This also helps me with the personal dilemma. I participate more in religion now than I ever have before, and it happens to be the most hypocritical of religions. But I am happy to do so. The rituals, the gospels, the life code all help me and make me a better person, and many of the people I meet through religion are a source of inspiration. That is enough.

Thank you, Richard Holloway. Your book has helped me in many ways.         

Life's transitions

Life can seem to progress at remarkably different speeds. We can have periods, often lasting many years, when we seem in full control and we can glide through any challenges thrown up for us. In these periods, the pace of life can feel gratifyingly relaxed – it is as if we are being driven slowly along a beautiful road and enjoying the view.

In most lives, these stable periods are interrupted by times when everything seems to happen at once. We don’t feel in control, and are often stressed, but somehow we put one foot in front of the other and instinct helps us through. For many of us, these periods are thrilling and do most to define us. These times usually correspond to life’s transitions.

A full life will usually have many transitions, some larger than others. The earliest ones we know little about, such as conception and birth. I find the first one with any consciousness to be around age ten, when parents no longer resemble sages or Santa Claus or Dumbledore, and we willfully start to place more faith on ourselves and on other friends, with missed effects.

Next comes leaving home for a substantial part of the year, often to college. Before of after that comes a first deep partnership experience. Eventually that might lead to a fuller commitment, moving in together, and in many cases an ending of that commitment, often messy and challenging.

New jobs, new homes, new partnerships and even new marriages can signal transitions through middle life, and a big one for most of us is becoming a parent. Twenty years or so after that, the kids start leaving home and an empty nest results. Some have extra transitions, perhaps a religious conversion, an addiction or a jail term.

Finally we might get retirement, forced or welcomed, followed by health episodes and loss of loved ones. Life can start to resemble a series of small defeats that might be deferred but have to be faced eventually. Moving into a nursing home could be one of those, and finally we have to face our own impending death.

I was reflecting on this because somehow over the last few years people close to me have been experiencing transitions, and I have been trying to help them as best I can. I had my own run of them in 2009-2012. Volunteering has brought me closer to some facing their final transitions. And for the second time in a decade I am about to face the empty nest.

Which transitions are the toughest? Those involving a reversal are probably the hardest, especially when that reversal requires standing in front of friends a diminished person. Redundancy and separation are the most common of these. In the age of social media, when we all paint picture perfect lives with our posts of escalating competitive optimism, these reversals can be sudden and humiliating. By the same token, social media can help us gain the support we need to see us through.

Of the other transitions, I wonder if the one faced by 18-year-olds leaving home for college is the hardest. It is such a big change and few have the maturity to understand it or prepare themselves. Before the change, life was regular and lived under a protective umbrella. High school has a routine, and life with parents involves meals arriving on the table and clean laundry in drawers.

Suddenly all this changes. Kids are thrown into a looser schedule while being required to manage much of their own business and surviving in an environment with few, or even no, acquaintances.

Perhaps my own first week at college was a bit typical. I was desperate for the first couple of days, confused, worried, and fearful. Then I happened upon a group of people at an event organized by the college and had fun and found some others in the same boat that I could relate to. From then on I could face the challenges and forge a way forward.

Colleges realize the strain of those days and go out of their way to help, but there are no guarantees that it will work. Some kids are more prepared than others and the sorting process happens so quickly that many will end up in inappropriate groups and some in no groups at all.

This transition is also tough as a parent. Our heads tell us that letting the kids fly is the right course, indeed a cause for celebration, but our hearts share their anxiety and want to hold them tight. Meanwhile, the house and life may suddenly seem empty, perhaps putting new pressures on marriages. My first experience of an empty nest as a parent was certainly a big catalyst to my own burst of transitions.

What can we do to make transitions easier, for ourselves or for loved ones? Denial or deferment are bad options. Transitions are necessary for us to grow, and we are better facing them head on. The 18-year-old may be dreading leaving home, but there is not really a good alternative, we can’t just live all of our life at one age.

As good friends, we can reach out to people in need, looking out for when a transition may be imminent or already in full swing. In the turmoil, some stability, some diversion, some humour and some honesty can all help a great deal. We try to use all of these with our friends in the nursing home.

What if we are the ones needing help? Well, our best bet is to ask for it. Facing up to such a need can be the hardest step. Transitions can be the best time of all the cement our most enduring relationships.

Further, we can try to enjoy the ride while we are in transition, much as we enjoy the thrill of a roller coaster. Wow, did all this really happen to me in the last week or the last year? And I’m still here, and some of my decisions under pressure have been good ones. I can do this.

We can also be thankful for the periods of calm between transitions as well. A body needs rest as well as exercise, and a healthy life needs some periods of recuperation too. I try to celebrate the most stable and peaceful aspects of my own life. They might not seem special to someone on the roller coaster, but I’m quite enjoying my spectator role thank you very much.        

The Death of Retail

Retail has been dear to me for my whole life. I did not realise it as a child, but it is in my blood. My dad ran a store and his dad ran many stores. My mum’s parents ran a sweet shop and a pub. I always enjoyed getting involved in small commercial events. When I joined Shell, I arrived in the retail division almost by accident, but what a happy accident it turned out to be.

I had some very lucky experiences, and that allowed me to add some skills to my genetic advantages. Before 1990 Shell did not even recognise itself as a retailer, then it lurched completely to the opposite extreme, before settling back into its original torpor. Lost opportunities abounded, and still abound.

I am currently in Europe on holiday, and on the flight over I got to watch one movie. In the end I made a smart choice of The Founder, a biographical movie about Ray Kroc, the early impetus behind McDonald’s after purloining ideas from the founding brothers.

It was a good movie, well balanced in the portrayal of its leading characters, with plenty of nuance in its treatment of both Kroc and the brothers. But for me the joy of the movie lay in its exploration of the art and the science of retail. Shell’s retailing business has a lot in common with that of McDonald’s – both use outlets and rely on various operating contracts and models with people who run those outlets day to day. So the challenges and insights that shone through the movie were very familiar to me.

In the past I have trained youngsters from the retail arms of oil companies. If I ever got that opportunity again, I think I could devise a lovely workshop using the movie as case study and exemplar material. I think it would be fun and instructive for all concerned.

Here are just a few of the examples of generic retail lessons from the movie. One brother had a “pile it high” showman talent, while the other had an eye for the intense detail of the customer experience. They designed a workflow to offer a consistent fast, quality experience that differentiated from competition while saving costs. They recognised that the service workflow was critical. Kroc saw the potential to scale via franchises, seeing that the name, the golden arches and the service flow were all distinguishing features. He learned how to select operators, gravitating from local business owners with money towards hungry couples with a service mentality. A consultant used a site profitability type analysis to help Kroc win a greater share of the cake. All the while location, location, location was a strong mantra. Kroc was not afraid of hard work himself and spent time fine tuning processes, imposing standards and promoting talent. This workshop could last a week!

My observation of retail in the US is of a fast-changing and vulnerable sector. Retail will survive, after all Amazon is a retailer, but some established business models feel to be heading for a rapid obsolescence.

The US invented the shopping mall – one of my least favourite places on earth. The country is chock full of them, large and small. An amazing statistic is that the US has more than ten times the retail land use per capita than Europe. That occurred because land is generally plentiful, costs for credit, building, rent and labour are all low, and a middle class grew large, wealthy and rapacious in short order. When Americans visit Europe, they must wonder where all the shops are. By contrast, I remember driving around Houston and noting that I could travel miles just by using store car parks.

Many malls were struggling even before the rise of online shopping. Many chains had overdeveloped and were not distinctive enough from each other. Even fifteen years ago, many seemed to me to have no customers except at weekends and holidays, and except for those on budgets and older people who price hunt with bargain coupons and never yield the retailer any profits.

These segments are still around today, and desperate retailers can’t escape from voucher-land. I go into Bed Bath and Beyond for one item, and find it quickly in a deserted store. But then I reach the check out line, and stand while three customers spend five minutes each unloading vouchers and managing refunds or offers. This is not a highlight of my day!

Now Amazon and its ilk have made things much worse. Supermarkets are OK for now, and convenience restaurants are doing well, but anything selling clothes or household items is on life support (though Home Depot is fine for now with its commercial customer base requiring instant availability). The indistinguishable Macy’s, JC Penney and Sears are like ghost towns, but malls realise they need these anchor tenants and I expect many are by now paying negative rents yet still losing money.

The Economist wrote an essay about the death of the US mall and made some fine points, but in my opinion it missed the most frightening aspect.

The point well made was about employment. While the president is busy trying to salvage the few remaining manufacturing jobs, he should surely turn his attention to retail, which employs many times more, including more women and people in every town in the land. Automation is removing these jobs fast but the death of the mall will accelerate the trend. This is the next employment crisis facing America, and it is probably already too late to do much about it.

But for me the point missed by the Economist is the social piece. Not only will smaller towns lose their only reliable place of work and face a downward drag on land prices, in many cases they will lose the only place where people actually meet at the same time. Even in larger cities young people tend to gather at the mall, and in smaller ones they have few real alternatives.

In those places the death of the mall may signal big trouble for the community. Large numbers of people will have no job and nowhere to meet other people. That feels like a recipe for drug and alcohol abuse and for suicide risk to me, adding fuel to another one of the emerging crises.

Is there a way forward? I am not sure that there is. There is no resurrection for retail outside food, food service and speciality stores – Amazon will make sure of that. There is little future for a mall with too much space and not enough profitable stores, especially when more local people have less money in their pockets. Communities can attempt to fashion other civic facilities to meet in, but that would require a large culture change and public funding that is far from plentiful.

Other countries will face these challenges too, but not as quickly or as violently as the US. There, the combination of a lack of social safety net or community cohesion, and dispersed populations outside major cities could be severe indeed. A universal basic income is a good idea and might arrive sooner than we expect, but that doesn’t do anything to create a life that feels sociable.

My great grandfather started a hat shop in 1900 that grew into a network of department stores. My family might have progressed from rags to rags in three generations, were it not for my serendipity in finding a niche at Shell. If I am advising my own children where to look to avoid the curse of “rags to rags”, I will certainly not be guiding them anywhere near a small-town US shopping mall.        

The End of the Nightmare

So we are now four months into a four-year term and we have learned a lot.

First, the campaign was not any sort of aberration; it was an authentic precursor for the presidency. Some people hoped that the man really was such a genius that he could put on one act for a campaign and pivot to a totally different presidential person afterwards. Well, we can give up on that one now.

The campaign showed up everything we needed to know. Here was an arrogant, bullying, shameless deluded person on an outrageous ego trip, surrounded by a few more dangerous people along for the ride using the unreliable vehicle to further various warped agendas, hitched to a party vehicle bankrupt of ideas beyond greed. The presidency is exactly the same thing. The campaign had some small hope of success, and somehow pulled it off, partly thanks to the complacency of the opposition. The presidency lacks even that small hope; by most measures, it is doomed.

So already people are speaking of end games. David Brooks thinks that the window for constructing a functioning administration has passed, because the whirlwind of scandal is already beyond control, so nothing gets done, everyone on the ship loses trust and runs for the lifeboat to look after themselves, and no one of any competence can be recruited to the sinking ship to replace them.

This feels credible, as week-by-week we see the effects of an understaffed office buffeted by scandal and self-inflicted wounds. The good news for those of us who find the stated policies of the administration to be detestable is that they will be able to enact hardly any of them. It is little better in congress. The Republican agenda, such as it is, runs nakedly against the interests of the misguided souls who voted for it. Ryan and McConnell are unable to come up with any legislation that does not lay that fact bare, and yet can still be supported by the zealots of the freedom caucus.

It surely is tempting to laugh. But it would be more appropriate to cry, and to be fearful too, because the president has significant executive power, through words and tone as well as through action. Institutions may take generations to recover from the damage, and meanwhile people suffer and the world holds its breath as its decency is threatened.

The scale of shameless mendacity and incompetence is staggering, as is its brutal tone. Blatant lies are uttered, repeated, twisted, denied, reshaped and left to hang in a way that a community social club would be ashamed of. Allies (except Israel) are trashed while autocrats are lauded. Insults are hurled in all directions based on a whim or on having the presidential ego threatened, reminiscent of a middle school playground. Protocol is trampled all over, irrespective of any law that might be broken.

Much of this behaviour rebounds straight into the Trumpian coiffured face, in utterly predictable ways. There is probably little legal misbehaviour over Russia, but Comey does his job and follows through and shows some independence, also annoying the famous ego by hinting that he may have inadvertently turned the election. So he is fired in a fit of petulance, followed through by stories changing wildly to fuel the fire of speculation of true misdeeds, and royally insulted for good measure to ensure further leaks and retribution. Brooks may be right – it is hard to see an escape from this spiral.

But reaching this conclusion is not enough. Something must happen next, and we need to work out what that something might be. The spiral of doom is not sustainable forever, indeed very likely not even for four years.

To try to work this out, we have to start with the personality of the president. A few things stand out. First, he is exhausted already. On the foreign tour, his hair looked as sprightly as ever, but his eyes betrayed how tired he was. He is not young, and he must be physically vulnerable. Next, his unshakeable self-belief is starting to wobble. We started with “only I can fix this”, moved to “health is complex”, and are heading towards avoiding issues. An ego shaken is a dangerous animal.

Most importantly, I think he is hating this job. The briefings, hard work, complexity, buffeting and checks on power can all be an invigorating challenge for a time but they wear down someone with such hubris and such a low attention span. In an interview a month ago he admitted to liking the job less than he had thought, and I can’t see this improving any time soon.

So what happens next? We can already see what happens in the short term, he just lashes out, becomes even more impetuous and does what he can simply because he can. I put the Paris renunciation into this category. He had spent days being isolated at NATO, the EU and the G7. His main priority after that had nothing to do with US interests or even feeding his base, it was to get even and to show power and feed his own ego. This is salutary as we go forward. The next show of defiant impulsiveness might just involve a red button.

I am not sufficient of a student of history to be able to find illustrative comparisons for this situation. Nixon, Henry VIII and Charles I are being cited, but I think we need to find clearer examples. Roman emperors could be a good place to look – perhaps Caligula or Nero?

Incapacity is one possible end game, assuming this could be medically conclusive and accepted by Trump’s family and that he agrees to resign or limit himself to a titular role with a sort of regency operation around him. But, short of hospitalisation, I can’t see him accepting this lightly, and he would probably undermine any regency operation that was informal. Formal regency would be rather like an impeachment, and that feels even less likely, except very slowly and painfully. Britain has shady men in suits to deal with these situations; I am not sure what the US has.

There may be other end games, but I can’t think of any that feel likely. Most probably this spiral of doom can continue for several months or years, each twist further challenging our credulity. It would be a macabre public humiliation, and one with massive potential for serious, lasting damage, starting with that red button.

How should liberals react in this situation?  Lexington in the Economist rightly argues for patience. Many are rushing towards impeachment, but it is too soon and may rebound as a strategy. The three priorities from an earlier blog remain intact. First, help to protect against lasting global damage, by whatever means necessary. Next, allow the failure to become obvious to the blue-collar voters of Michigan, not just liberals in New York or Hamburg. And last, build a compelling alternative narrative, ideally with a charismatic champion like Trudeau at the helm.

Part of the patience strategy is to make sure that the Republicans are brought down along with their president. They will try to pin everything on him, and may succeed, unless enough time and enough focus are placed on their odious attitude to regular citizens. Again, this means focus on people who voted for Trump. Despicable though the Paris decision was, it means little to many Americans. That health care bill and that budget most certainly will, given time to fester.

It is hard to be patient amidst such provocation. However, so long as true calamity can be averted, there are reasons for hope. The checks and balances on presidential power are working. Executive orders will run out of steam in the absence of legislation. Neo-liberal greed might be exposed and killed off for good. Europeans and others are already uniting and showing more maturity than before. The ultimate legacy of Trump might be wonderful, just not in any way that he would have hoped or would be able to take any credit for.

In the meantime, let us pray for Donald. He is hating this already, and it ain’t getting any better any time soon.