Against Satan

The bible has a few main characters, many shared by the Torah and Koran. God is central to the plot. Jesus comes to the fore in the New Testament. Some other prophets have important roles. And then there is Satan.

Satan, or the devil, enters right at the start of Genesis, and is all over the Old Testament. It may be surprising to learn that the New Testament has a lot of Satan too, with plenty of plot lines about final judgments, hell and apocalypse. Nowadays, Christian churches tend to de-emphasise these aspects in the readings we hear on Sundays, but studying the gospels show that Jesus was quite big on Satan.

I am with the modern interpretations. I find Satan to be incredible and highly damaging to how we can interpret and gain from religious teaching. I think the time has come to banish Satan once and for all from the way we think.

There are various ways that Satan could have come to prominence. Of course, Satan may literally exist, along with serpents and women created from ribs of men and six day creation epics and St Peter at the pearly gates playing master sorter.

There are other more earthly possibilities. Most start from the idea of an all-seeing, all-powerful benevolent God. That leads clerics to need to answer the toughest question posed by us dumbass mortals: if God is so cool, how come my baby kid died of leukaemia and chunks of Mozambique got wiped out last month?

There aren’t really good answers. Some clerics tell us that there is a bigger story that we can only see a part of, that Tommy’s leukaemia was part of some master plan. Some even hint that Tommy must have committed some sin, or that suffering offers wider benefits. But most blame Satan, pitting God and Satan in some endless cosmic battle that God will win in the end but only after lots of suffering and with a bit of help from little us.

How convenient this storyline is. It can explain away seeming narrative inconsistencies, offer us a role, and help the cause of those people in power who want to cajole the rest of us to accept injustice in the hope of later salvation. But the story still does not add up.

Why should I care about this anomaly when the bible is full of them? Well, actually, the gospels have a lot fewer anomalies than the rest of the bible. True, resurrection and virgin birth are somewhat hard to swallow, but most of the life’s work of Jesus is inspiring and comes from factual sources; I find his teaching to be a strong life guide.

So it is a bit jarring that my hero seemed to put so much focus on this unhelpful villain. Perhaps he didn’t really, but those who wrote up the story were so fixed in their views of Satan that these views infected their narrative. Perhaps Jesus did use the Satan concept a lot, as a sort of marketing compromise so people only took to his wider message. Even modern heroes like Mandela have to do things like that at times.

But my problem is that whereas nearly all the gospel content points us in a good direction, the Satan stuff does the opposite. The passage that comes nearest to being helpful is the story about temptation in the desert that we hear on the first Sunday of Lent. Here Jesus is tempted by the devil, and the temptation is made quite explicit, in the form of hubris, greed and craving for adulation. If we restrict our concept of Satan to a warning to try to avoid such failings, then it can help. That particular message could certainly help a current occupant of a white house in Washington DC, and should help the rest of us in judging such people worthy of leadership.

But Satan goes so much further, it seems even via Jesus, and the rest only causes damage. Satan puts us in the wrong mind set most of the time. Thinking of judgment fills us with fear, emphasises point scoring and tribal, combative behaviour, and prioritises the distant (dead) future ahead of the present. The effects of all this can be seen throughout human history.

Taking the micro level first, Satanic thoughts lead us to be fatalistic, to judge, blame and shame. The most obvious effect is in the handling of illness. In Jesus’ time, lepers were outcasts. It was fair enough to aim to achieve a level of quarantine, but not so fair to equate sufferers with devils who must be sinners and to make no effort to look for cures, except for mystical cures.

That was two thousand years ago, but we have hardly learned. Homosexuality and suicide are persistent examples of damaging action based on flawed thinking. Then there is the whole area of mental illness. Nowadays, at least we don’t suppose the worst sufferers are infected by devils, but we still shun such people, blame them, and are far too slow in looking for cures.

In all of these cases, if our attitude were one of acceptance of difference and difficulty and of seeking ways to support others, we would achieve much better results. Jesus tried to show the way, but the Satan narrative got in the way. Why would we want to reach out to people infected by Satan?

The macro effects of satanic thinking might be even worse. A worldview based around cosmic struggle is not a good way to frame anything. We can take the position that the cosmic struggle renders us powerless or in the control of wider forces, in which case why try very hard to mitigate climate change? Or we can place ourselves as foot soldiers in the mighty war, of course on the side of the good guys.

Foot soldier thinking leads to beliefs of superiority, with all its historical consequences. The crusades started that way. Even in my own childhood, we sang “Onward Christian Soldiers”, somehow accepting its literal call to arms and implied condemnation of unbelievers as savages. The Pence doctrine is key in US current foreign policy, but, even before that extremism, we had the axis of evil. Iran’s narrative of the US as the “great Satan” is just as contemptible. Somehow religious zealotry and tribal nationalism become intertwined and combine to pull us all apart and to take up arms.

It feels credible that the root cause of all of this is doctrine around Satan. Everything becomes binary, absolute and warlike, when the more helpful way to view the world is complex, nuanced and tolerant. The thought for this blog came when I was momentarily at risk of having to sit through the latest Avengers movie last weekend – luckily I managed to dodge it, because I find such fare hard to sit through and anger inducing.

Such movies are everywhere, further feeding our attitudes. We can even argue that individual acts of terror originate with the same doctrine. Either someone is so sure their own side is right that inhuman response in justified, or they deliberately choose a devil-type role, seduced by its glamour and the frustration of more nuanced positions. And we all fall for it and hype it up with our language of good versus evil.

So it is time to kill of Satan. That means the opposite of actively trying to kill Satan, the dominant approach through history. It means casting the idea of Satan aside completely, as the damaging over-simplified tosh that always has been.    

A fair deal with China

I was always taught that there was one critical technique in any negotiation, or even any relationship. The key is to get into the shoes of the other party, to understand life from their side. That way we can talk their language, understand their hot buttons, and find deals that work for all sides.

The US and China are currently involved in a major negotiation, ostensibly about trade but touching on all aspects of the relationship. We are relentlessly fed positions about US goals and complaints, built from statements about China developed from a US angle. So I thought it might be useful to try to look at the situation from a Chinese angle.

I haven’t done a lot of research about this. I don’t have many Chinese friends to talk openly about it either. So I am reduced to some educated guesswork. Still, it is a start.

To a Chinese eye, the central complaint of the US must seem hilarious. China sells a lot more stuff to the US than the US buys from China. After years of lectures about how closed Communist economies were cruel and destroyed value and threatening and evil and lots of other sins, China made a choice in the 1990’s to embrace the US shibboleth of capitalism. It has worked so well that all the US seems to do now is complain about it.

China anticipated market needs and set about supplying them with great discipline, and involving many Chinese moving home and working very hard to build better lives. That the US has built up a voracious demand and a workforce unprepared or unskilled to supply that demand economically is surely a US problem, not a Chinese one. That the US corporate and financial machine has required such greedy returns, and has as result been anxious to sign contracts to enter the Chinese market that have some stipulations about joint ventures and intellectual property is surely just good business by China rather than some form of exploitation. By the way, at least twice in the last five years it has been Chinese action to boost demand and credit that has kept that same US-led global financial edifice afloat.

Now it is perfectly reasonable to ask Chinese firms to act within the law, and even to renegotiate those laws if they are unbalanced. So when the intellectual property transfer has been achieved covertly or illegally that should stop, and China should be happy to agree to enforce that. China should also be ready to agree to rebalance terms of the world trade organisation – but would be fair to point out that it is the US that has blocked the function of the dispute resolution mechanism of that body. At the same time, some other rebalancing might be fair. Why should an American still always chair the World Bank, and a European the IMF?

There is also the question of the role of the dollar. China must have very mixed feelings about that, especially since it holds so many dollars. For any other nation bar the US, the response to persistently growing debt must include devaluation and austerity, and all the US based investors are quick to prescribe that diet for everyone else. But the US instead grows the budget deficit further, and the dollar stays strong, because it is the reserve currency and influenced more by international than domestic factors. Still, the fundamentals are the fundamentals, and one day they will bite. I wonder whether Mr. Xi ever points this out to Donald?

Even with the complication of the dollar, the trade dispute would be resolvable were it only about trade. China will be happy to enforce global standards, so long as it has more say in setting them. And it will also be ready to temporarily buy more goods from the US to massage the trade balance.

But of course this is not just about trade. There are at least three other lenses, all visible to China.

The first lens is politics, specifically US politics. Trump needs his stock market to be buoyant in 2020 and to have some deals to trumpet, so he will make sure there is a deal. China has internal politics too, but can be more patient. And Xi will very likely outlast Trump.

The second lens is about world influence generally, and China’s rising ambition. China will see that trade is just one visible manifestation of a wider gripe and the balance of power. They will be amused that the US does nothing to fix the fundamentals, either economically or diplomatically, where it continues to abuse allies and foes alike and to commit to unwinnable disputes.

China will see special irony through this lens, with the US quick to condemn two Chinese policies. How can the US condemn a modest Chinese military build up, when it has nuclear weapons in bases surrounding China in Guam, Okinawa and South Korea? How can they moan about Chinese treatment of Uighur Moslems when it still has troops all over Afghanistan? Bleating about international treaties must seem ironic, given how the US ignores many such treaties itself. And it is the US that is militarising economics – the Chinese have just been told they can no longer buy Iranian oil. Imagine how that looks to China, given the situation in Yemen and elsewhere.

Then there is Belt and Road. The starting point to objections about that must be “What else would you like us to do with all the money your consumers are transferring to us?” If the world insists on building up debt to China, China has to invest somewhere, and it would not help, nor be permitted, to buy up even more of USA Inc. Belt and Road might have subtle strategic overtones, but it is helping developing nations and building global infrastructure. If the Gates Foundation were doing it, nobody would complain. China might be happy to share some governance with global bodies for Belt and Road, but the west hardly seems to be rushing to offer that.

The final lens is the ugliest one. It must seem to China that the US is just bullying China on trade because it can. For all the shifting long-term balance of power, for now China has little choice but to seek an accommodation. This is the typical reaction of a threatened bully, and of course the natural behaviour of the current president.

It is obvious from history where such behaviour leads. Compliance from the bullied is accompanied by resentment and plotting for revenge, while the bully craves more satisfaction and fails to address anything fundamental. Hopefully this motivation will not outlast Trump, but, even if it doesn’t, the resentment and desire for revenge will still have been built up. And for sure the potential for revenge will ultimately be enormous.

So it is possible to see where a more globally beneficial accommodation between China and US could be reached, and even some paths around the obstacles preventing it. Strong international bodies, suitably rebalanced for a new age, could play a role. Viewing this from a Chinese perspective helps to see the potential, but also how the attitude of current US leaders will prevent any of this potential from being realised, and indeed how this will ultimately boomerang.

Getting into the shoes of another party remains a great tool. My thoughts about China have been clarified by this exercise. We can all use the tool in matters great and small. It can improve all of our relationships.   

Understanding Trump Pence

Donald Trump is never out of the news. If he is not being attacked or sued, he is screaming on twitter and offending anyone in his path. He described his campaign as the best value publicity stunt ever, and was surprised as anybody when he actually won. In power he has continued to treat the presidency as a mouthpiece for his own publicity.

To understand Trump is to understand only this. Many people try to divine what it is he cares about, or how he wants to change his nation. It is a fruitless search, because he cares only for his own ego, his business, his family and his survival, with his ego way ahead of all the others and the others mainly a manifestation of his ego. Hence all he is doing most of the time is massaging his ego and campaigning to extend his opportunity to keep massaging.

A good example of this is immigration. Before his run for president, Trump did not hate immigrants any more than anyone else, only those who challenged his ego. He believes nothing that he says about immigration, whether it is about the country being full or invaded or somehow threatened, or even about its religious or ethnic purity.

It is much more simple than that. Immigration is a sure fire winning issue with his base. And his base massages his ego and prolongs his power, so he uses language to agitate them and activate them. Hence the only result he wishes for is for immigration to stay in the news, to continue feeding fears and to continue being a problem. The last thing he wants is any sort of solution or policy prescription, for that would only reduce the salience of the issue.

Look at the policies actually implemented by the administration and this becomes obvious. The family separation policy kept the subject in the news. The border itself has been made into more of a bottleneck, by increasing security while constricting the capacity to process potential immigrants, hence maintaining the pipeline. And aid has been cut to the source countries to maintain the incentive for people to attempt to come in. Further, any attempt to actually ease any of these issues in congress has been blocked. It is already obvious that caravans and backlogs and cruel human stories and fear will stay at fever pitch right up to 2020 and beyond.

The other signature policy of Trump is trade, or rather bullying potential trade partners. This is also a popular choice, and neat. In the short run, there are only gains from renegotiating deals, and the US holds most of the power in such negotiations. And the results are easily spun: new NAFTA is remarkably similar to old NAFTA, but Trump can claim some kudos. So long as markets collude in believing that deals will be concluded eventually, because everybody wants that outcome, then only good can come to the Trump brand.

Many Trump policies have these themes. They are good for rousing the base, and hated by elites, they are easy to keep in the news, while little real change is either required or beneficial. They are also tough for the opposition to counter: who can’t support better trade deals, and who can be in favour of uncontrolled illegal immigration?

The other side of the ticket, Pence, is precisely the opposite. He has clear goals based on core beliefs, and he is all about engineering change, yet few of his beliefs have any popular support. So this requires exactly the opposite tactic. Trump is all noise and little action, while the Pence cabal is all surreptitious action, action with long term consequences.

The Pence faction, to its credit, is very clear and consistent about its goals. He is open about being a Christian first, a Conservative second and a Republican third. And his Christianity is of the Evangelical variety.

It has taken me a while to understand Evangelicals. I call myself a Christian, but based on a set of values in the New Testament. Evangelicals appear to discard most of these, in favour of a more literal reading, especially of the Old Testament. This leads to a strict and traditional moral code, and, even more central, a belief that Judeo-Christian people are chosen by God, superior to others, and required to prepare the world for a final judgement.

All policies derive from this. Social conservatism, small government, tough on crime, pro religious exemptions (for his own side) at home, and pro Israel and other Judeo-Christian nations abroad. Climate change is somehow seen as God’s business, maybe even necessary as part of the grand apocalyptic plan. Further, support any group who will pay money to promote those same policies, and acceptance of any tactic, including gerrymandering or voter suppression. 

Of course, the problem with all these policies is that they lack popular support. Corporate money can mask this for a time with diatribes against tax, socialism, particular democrats, Muslims and so on, but the actual agenda does not lend itself for winning elections. Indeed, Pence’s own record is rather poor, usually underperforming expectations and polls. He often ends up apologising, for example when forced to withdraw some naked anti-LGBT legislation in Indiana when companies started boycotting the state.

But his movement is effective, because it has focus, money behind it and plenty of intellectual power too, including Pence himself, a lawyer. A classic case study for its success is found in its accommodation with Trump. It is a simple deal. Pence offers total loyalty, dutifully standing behind Donald whenever asked regularly defending the indefensible. Most administration officials have not lasted the course; Pence is a rare exception. In return, all he asks are a few specific policy actions. And he receives them.

Look at the lasting legacy of this administration. The Supreme Court has tilted to social conservatism, and lower courts too. Abortion faces more restrictions in many states. Big corporate money is entrenched in politics as never before. And Israel and its goals have been relentlessly promoted, from recognising Jerusalem or the annexation of Golan, the weakening of Palestinians, and the demonization of Iran. Towards the latter goal, it has involved a tactical alliance with pliable Arab nations; note the rare veto this week over supporting Saudi militarism in Yemen.

While you may share my abhorrence of the agenda, perhaps you can also share my admiration for its execution. With minimum publicity, an agenda with tiny and diminishing popular support has dominated an administration, and few have even noticed.

Trump’s so called agenda is hard to counter, but so is Pence’s. While few actually agree with his policies, most are somewhat indifferent to them, so campaigning against them can come across as unpatriotic, anti-Semitic, or simply out of tune with concerns of ordinary folk. So probably the best approach is to campaign away from both of them, focusing on pocket book issues like healthcare where neither can claim any success.

So we have an amoral narcissist with no strategy beyond power and glory, allied to an insidious strategic religious extremist. Both will leave lasting damage, one through disrespect for institutions, the other by using those same institutions. They have little love for each other and no common agenda, but have reached an accommodation that is brilliant and effective. Both are hard to counter, though one will end in jail while the other will be free to continue his crusade. Perhaps they will get four more years.

It is depressing. It is instructive. And, at the strategic level, it is admirable.     

Celebrating Gifted Amateurs

When Jeroen van der Veer took over as Shell CEO in 2004-05, he made a number of keynote changes to the Group. One theme was an increase in professionalism around the company. Typical postings were to increase to four years to enable incumbents to develop and deliver fully within a role. One expression I recall him using was that Shell had been too much the preserve of “gifted amateurs”. Considering myself something of a gifted amateur and a beneficiary of the Shell way, my initial resistance to his analysis was rather personal. But now, having had fifteen years to reflect (does that make me a professional?) I still think he was more wrong than right.

I could see where Jeroen’s position came from. He is an engineer, and engineering is a professional’s career, full of modules, accreditations and defined career paths requiring long, specific experiences. In other disciplines, he saw in the opposite, especially among a cadre of protected leadership candidates. If you were deemed to have senior leadership potential you were able to drift quickly between positions and had very little accountability. Often such folk became rather arrogant and selfish, until they reached the top and were able to lord it over the mere professionals who did the real work, while getting in their way.

I came across many such creatures in my time at Shell, a lot of them Dutch. But I could describe my own career in a similar way. I was recruited based on very general attributes and thrown into a series of jobs for which I had no discernable professional competence. Although I hope I wasn’t too arrogant or selfish, I was certainly a gifted amateur, and often not terrible gifted.

The problem with Jeroen’s analysis, I believe, is that typical professional training is very narrow, and not very useful beyond its niche. In his own position as CEO, I needed many competences that he will only have acquired via experience or innate ability.

Here are four such competences. Line management is critical, including motivating others, assessment, selection, delegation and setting a team culture. Strategy is central as a CEO, including some analysis, goal setting, visioning and prioritisation. Major project management and deal making are also important, the latter less about negotiation or sales and more about forming and managing relationships with partners and suppliers.

There is very little formal professional development available in any of those categories. Line management is a black hole, project management and strategy are taught via process, tool and case study, and deal making is too often equated to sales. While in each case more could and should be done to create professional paths to accreditation, it is not simple, but the disciplines are applied, experiential and contextual. These constraints also mean we will gain precious little feedback or coaching on these through our careers, and what we do receive may do more harm than good.

It is tempting to conclude that this is a failure of business and academics, or the interface between them. But amateurism is the natural state for most things in life. Most of the difficult things we need to do to make successes of our lives are areas where getting help or training is almost impossible. The most obvious area is parenting. Wow, parenting is difficult, especially early on. But we throw ourselves into it, supported only be love and hindered by lots of poor advice.

Parenting is hardly unique. Driving a car does offer some initial training, but the real skills are honed the hard way and without support. Managing the small business that is our personal finances is usually an unsupported, amateurish affair. And what about sex, dating and marriage?

No, it is the professional disciplines that are anomalies. And perhaps that is partly because the insiders want to protect their positions, creating all sorts of trade unions, language and certifications to bolster their status. Professionalism has its place (I really hope that the guy who designed the RFK bridge and the woman who performed a biopsy on me had some qualifications), but can be overrated.

Further, consider deep professionals you have come across, usually engineers or finance or legal experts. While they are necessary to any endeavour, and often impressive in their skills, too often they make terrible leaders, and even become weak at their own discipline once the requirements become more nuanced at senior levels. For the most senior engineers need most of all to integrate with other skill areas, to manage complex projects and to manage others. These are not typical strengths of passionate experts, indeed they often see them as getting in the way and will resist roles with such requirements, only accepting them for status and money and because other avenues are closed.

It is hard to escape this dilemma; indeed the Shell “gifted amateur” approach pre Jeroen may be a good option, so long as some humility and accountability is built in. Shell also developed a leadership framework, which was great for assessment but too late in careers for development. There is much scope for developing professional theories for all of these general areas. Paying world-class professional specialists better without requiring them to do things beyond their competence also makes sense.

But I also have another idea, which comes from some inspiring articles I have recently read about in the field of psychology. In Zimbabwe, one of the very few trained psychologists did an amazing thing. Rather than bemoaning the absence of fellow professionals and glorying in his unique status, he found a creative way to make a difference. He noticed that grandmothers in villages tended to have some useful amateur psychology skills, being good listeners, experienced in life, caring and respected. So he set up a network of these grandmothers, gave them some tools and tips, and put them to work. The stressed people of Harare have some amateur relief, and are grateful for it.

This story has started to spread around the world. New York City has implemented something called Friendship Benches. I love it. Perhaps what I love the most is the humility of the psychology professionals, being prepared to embrace amateurs to generate better outcomes for patients.

This line of thinking has potential in so many other fields. Imagine if most classrooms had volunteer amateur assistants available. Imagine if people could have access to financial advice that was not tainted by the greedy incentives of the financial services sector. Imagine if folk requiring everyday had not just scarce professionals and overburdened family members to rely on, but also a army of amateur volunteer carers.

I think this sort of thing will spread in the coming years, enabled by many trends: the gradual weakening of unions; the availability of online training and supervision; and a supply of willing amateurs with time on their hands being past retirement age or working in the gig economy. Professionals surely have their place, as do unions, but both should put outcomes ahead of job protection, and be humble enough to accept that others can be modestly trained to contribute.

The humble psychologist in Harare might change the world more radically than even he could conceive. For me, that makes him a Nobel Prize candidate. Jeroen van der Veer and his disciples, I have a lot of respect for you, but please take note. 

Humanity's Fragile

One of the most uplifting stories over the last fifty years is how humanity has evolved in handling its fragile. We can learn from this success and try to do even better during the next fifty years.

Let us be clear, we are all fragile to some degree. Remember the last time you were sick. Last summer I was sick for a few weeks and it made me weaker in every way. Everything that could go wrong seemed to do so, I had to take extra care even with simple actions, and I craved love while being unable to offer much in return. I had a whole year of fragility in 2009, when much change happened in my life, change that I was not really prepared for and made me vulnerable.

Yet I count myself as among the least fragile people I come across. I have many natural advantages and blessings, few of which I have done much to earn. If something as common as a sickness can knock me over so comprehensively, many others seem much closer to breaking point.

It is a healthy thing to remember ones own fragility, and also to observe the fragile around us. Hollywood and TV do poor jobs at reminding us that the world is full of fragile people. To the extent that fragility is made obvious in common culture, it comes through in stories from the developing world and of less fortunate groups in the developed world. It is too easy to see those people as not like us, sometimes beyond our scope of help, and at our worst moments even somewhat deserving of their plight.

I enjoy travelling by bus. It is not fast but still convenient and a great window into society. I observe a lot of kindness on buses. Just in the last week, a guy was chatting away to the driver in a way that betrayed some mental weakness, and some need for connection that the driver was happy to indulge. Another lady struck up a conversation with me that had a similar vibe. Many people on the bus struggle with physical disability and display social vulnerabilities, sometimes burdened with elderly or babies, and usually most of the folk around them tolerate and take time to show simple kindness, even in busy New York.

When I shop at Trader Joe’s, I notice that they have a wonderful staffing policy, leading to a great atmosphere in the store. One aspect is a willingness to employ fragile people. One young lady in particular has some mental frailty, but she is trusted with real work and respected, while the rest of the staff keep a close eye on her. Generally, customers tolerate her and help her as well. My loyalty to the store is greatly enhanced by this humanity.

A more obvious example is volunteering at the home for the very elderly, where many residents are weak and sometimes confused, but the strong support the weak and the nuns and volunteers offer much love. I also see less obvious examples of the same type of humanity each time I go to church. 

I guess this type of snapshot happened fifty years ago as well. Some might argue that community was even stronger then, because people moved much less and lived more closely with extended families and tighter communities. But I think we overlook the sacrifices involved in that type of society.

The most important sacrifice was by women staying at home. Two generations ago, frail elderly, children with special needs or disabled adults were often homebound and cared for full time by stay-at-home mums. Such fragile folk were less visible to us in society then, precisely because they were not really a part of society, they were behind the closed doors of a home where a woman sacrificed her own life.

This sacrifice was further embedded by the way society treated the fragile. Lady Mary Warnock died a couple of weeks ago; it was her ground breaking report which finally brought fragile kids into mainstream schools rather than being educated in special institutions. Such places were often cruel, and made it much harder for fragile kids to find a pathway to a full adult life.

And special schools were not the worst part of the cruel system. Disabled adults and anyone with some mental fragility ran the risk of consignment to asylums, while the elderly frail were often housed in places with similar principles. Pathways to recovery were not a major priority of such places.

Indeed good public policy is all about creating such pathways. I sense that this is one more area where Europe is ahead of the US. When we lived in Holland, our kids became friends with two neighbouring kids with behavioural and cognitive challenges. Either or both trod a path that could have led down towards crime or addiction. But I learned this year that both had forged vocational careers, in each case I suspect helped by programs with subsidies and extra support. That support cost taxpayers some euros, but was probably a good financial investment and certainly a great human one. I don’t have the same confidence that a similar situation in the US would have reached such a promising state.

To be fair, New York City does a lot. Access-a-ride is a strong program, and, belatedly, the current state administration is acting to remove cash bail and reduce the chances that fragile humans spiral downwards. I also applaud the scheme of the mayor’s wife to tackle mental health, even if its management appears weak so far. Trader Joe’s is among many employers that help as well, as are churches and other groups relying on volunteers. But I still feel that vulnerable kids from families without means are more likely to be sucked into a whirlpool than launched onto a current of success.

Medical advances have also helped, and progress is especially rapid in understanding mental health. I sense that many of those we see on the fringes of society today would have been sicker a couple of generations ago, perhaps in asylums or even dead. Humanity is working out how to handle its own weak, socially and medically and with more positive paths and fewer sacrifices for carers.

We can view other public policy through this lens. Drugs and criminal justice policies can help or hinder the fragile. Public transport, affordable housing, and caring professions need support. Pathways for fragile kids of 16-20 can be a priority, via vocational courses, apprenticeships and so on.

Less obvious, the fragile are the ones who need protecting from risks or abuses from businesses: the financial industry is a particular culprit, I don’t understand how robocalls are not banned, and I also find the rush to lotteries, casinos and sports betting to be short-sighted, since it is the fragile who most struggle to control their behaviour.

Technology can be a great enabler for the fragile. I guess we have to accept that early applications are more likely to be targeted at the hip than the needy, but eventually I can see a world with apps that support carers replacing those than count steps.

A tricky issue is how to police potential abuse. The fragile benefit from kindness via social contacts, but it is precisely those contacts that can become abusive. Churches do a lot of good, but can also harbour abuse or indoctrination. Carers are most effective when they can develop a deeper relationship, but become vulnerable to challenge if things develop badly. Fragile people often have limited awareness of boundaries. I fear that the current focus on proscribing behaviours, while necessary, can have unfortunate side effects. The warriors of such causes should think outside of their own bubbles occasionally.

I will strive to change my mental model for considering many issues of social behaviour or public policy. Rather than thinking from my own viewpoint or that of some typical healthy person, I will try to think of someone more fragile. After all, I or someone close to me could become that person in a blink of an eye. And even if it doesn’t, surely the cause of the fragile is a worthy one for humanity anyway.     

Sorting Hats and Politics

Anyone who has studied marketing will talk at length about the importance of market segmentation. Defining your target market, then your target group within that market, is a central part of any marketing strategy, since it drives decisions about product, location, price, promotion and everything else.

The people who love segmentation most of all are advertising experts. It is their creative enabler. Once they can picture a potential buyer, they can shape campaigns to appeal to him or her. That is how they win awards. Sometimes it even helps to sell products, though advertisers are notoriously vague about anything to do with financial results.

Segmentation is why many of us stare at the TV and fail to understand why anyone would ever buy anything on the basis of most commercials we see. WE are in the wrong segment, so the advertisers do not care. You notice the effect most when you are watching programs that you might not usually watch, because typically your segment for watching overlaps with your segment for choosing merchandise. So when I watch sports, I can at least understand all the many macho adverts for cars, even if I am not really attracted. But if I end up watching a gossipy movie for young people, I usually don’t even understand what is going on in the commercials.

I had mixed experience with segmentation in my Shell career. At some point I became in charge, temporarily, of all the marketing specialists in Europe for petrol stations, and they wasted no time in showing off their segmentation of European motorists. In a way it was impressive: they had five segments, and I could picture each one and see how driving and petrol buying might differ between them. They had beautiful videos as well – marketing types are very good at spending other people’s money.

But then I couldn’t make the next step. I thought of the types of locations for petrol stations, and felt most of them would need to attract people from all the segments, because petrol buying is so dominated by location. The marketers weren’t used to this sort of challenge, and nothing happened.

Now I look back, there probably was a middle ground. We might have been able to do things in locations with certain characteristics to target one group, without buyers in the other groups noticing or caring. We might have become a brand that one group associated positively, without any negative results for how the other groups felt about us. I wish I had not been so dismissive.

So segmentation is messy, but potentially valuable if you can find nuggets in the mess. Not all sports viewers want to rush out and buy a massive truck because of a film of one driving into the sunset driven by a cowboy accompanied by a deep bass voiceover. But maybe quite a few people who really would be attracted by that ad spend time watching sports.

I wish the marketing people spent longer understanding the mess. The way segmentation is taught fits the Harry Potter model, where everyone fits neatly into an ideal number of almost equal sized groups, and your group works for multiple situations. Real life is more complicated.

This applies also to political segmentation, trying to divine which types of people are inclined to vote for which party (if they vote at all). And there has been a boom in political segmentation, for at least three reasons. Politics has money behind it now, and targeting strategies can be more focused (partly thanks to social media). But the main reason is that traditional segmentations re breaking down, and political marketers are desperate to define new ones.

Growing up in England, the division was clear. The left were for working class people, those whose families had previously been exploited and who relied on unions, as well as newly inclusive welfare, health and education policies. The right was for those who valued the establishment, perhaps because that establishment offered their families continuing benefits.

I was told as a child that anyone not voting left in their youth had no heart, but anyone not voting right as a mature adult had no head. At the time there was some sense to this, as the left went through a phase of fighting against markets and growth, factors gradually pulling up global living standards.

I am not sure I would have drifted right even in this environment. But Thatcher put markets and selfishness on turbocharge, and that started a shift. After a time, my heart and my head both drifted leftwards, and that trend remains. The right replaced its natural voters like I might have become with others, often those who had won security and wanted to protect it against perceived threats like foreigners. Something similar happened in the US, with the civil rights movement a turning point.

Now these trends seem to have turned the world almost full circle, with less educated people tending to vote right and younger people in cities veering left. The polling and political establishment have been confused, and tried to define new segments.

Their problem has been that they have struggled to understand the new right, mainly because they struggle to respect them. It is true that many of the leaders of the new right have been shameless, and that their policies, such as they are, do nothing to benefit their voters. But those voters are angry – they are happy to continue losing, so long as the elites they despise start losing too.

This lack of respect shows through in the names given by pundits for new segments. They point to optimist versus pessimist, open versus closed, or tolerant versus resentful. Bagehot even tried exam failures versus exam passers, not his finest hour. All the segmentations are pejorative, and that inhibits understanding and responding. The best the elite can muster is condescension, re-education and charity, which only serve to grow the anger.

I have come up with an alternative, nimble versus rooted. The nimble look for opportunity in change and are ready to take risks. The rooted value and protect what they have, including tradition, and tend to see threats.

New York and Dubai are full of nimble people, while Scranton and Hartlepool have more rooted souls. The nimble move more, and select places of opportunity, which becomes self-fulfilling because nimble groups create things. The threats that the rooted fear often become reality, which serves to strengthen rooted beliefs.

The difference in my segmentation is that I don’t think is pejorative to the rooted. Many rooted values are generally positive, such as community, family, faith, or pride. Nimble cities can lack many of these virtues. And, most important, most of us don’t choose to become nimble or rooted, but are inclined to one or the other by our circumstances.

If your education has been limited by where you were born or your gender, you are likely to be rooted. If you have a handicapped child or sibling or a frail elderly relative to care for and no spare funds to pay for help, you are very likely to be rooted. If you live in subsidized housing in a town where your job has vanished and your skills have little value, you are likely to be rooted. And in each case it is less a failure than a product of circumstance. 

For progressives to win back the votes of the rooted, the starting point should be understanding why they are rooted and articulating policies to address the root causes. Needless to say, lectures about racism and LGBTQ rights from distant coasts are not the smartest place to start, still less wilfully casting aside tens of thousands of Amazon jobs. Even climate policies feel like an elite luxury to many rooted.

True, progressives are more likely to push for place-based policies, for healthcare and education and childcare support for all, or for retraining. But these are easily drowned out by nostalgic or nationalistic pleas, especially when these feel closer to home.

Segmentation is powerful. But, just like for my old experts at Shell, it needs to be made relevant and a bit messy before it can do more good than harm. Open versus closed only judges and feeds a lose-lose anti-elite mentality. Fascists and con men know how to exploit that situation.   

The Network Effect

One per month or so I have a tourist Wednesday, which includes going into Manhattan to watch a Broadway matinée. I usually buy at the box office, and rarely is there a queue, and often shows have so-called rush seats available for less than the prices in Times Square.

Last week I paid $40 to see Bryan Cranston in Network. Now, $40 is a lot to most people, but I find that a bargain to see one of the great actors of our time. We can certainly spend the same on a meal out.

Cranston did not disappoint. He has to work incredibly hard throughout the performance, and the energy he displayed and the character he portrayed were both utterly remarkable. I find the most wonderful thing about the best actors is how they can put on such mastery so many times per week. Live theatre is not TV or film, where you have the luxury of several takes and each scene is finished just once. This was a run-of-the-mill Wednesday matinée with a rather lifeless audience, yet Cranston gave of his brilliant best. I was mesmerised.

The play itself was also remarkable and I am still thinking about it nine days later. It is a wonderful vehicle for Cranston, with an utterly compelling central plot line about a newscaster becoming deranged.

The play was not flawless. The playwright includes some secondary plot lines and makes some efforts to develop secondary characters. Probably this is for the very practical reason that poor Cranston needs a break off stage every so often to recharge. But it almost seems as though the heart of the playwright is not in these secondary aspects, and, despite perfectly good acting, they failed completely to interest me. The overall effect became rather spotty, like an amateur show with too many long breaks while they changed the scenery.

I was also a bit frustrated by the technology. The play was written in the 1970’s and set there also. The modern interpretation is also set in the 1970’s, but included all sorts of technological gimmicks from more modern times, such as multiple screens and pixelated effects. Perhaps it was because my $40 seat was rather to the side of the auditorium, but for me these didn’t really work. And some aspects, such as having a sort of green room cum café on stage populated by audience members, seemed somehow inappropriate for the 1970’s but still dated for the 2010’s.

Still, the main plot line is riveting and it is that is still bouncing around my mind. It displayed real trends of the 1970’s and made an extreme projection from them. The brilliant thing is that these extreme projections are a very accurate reflection of exactly what has happened between the 1970’s and today. It is rare that something that tries to predict a dystopian future gets it so spot on.

The trends are manifold. Start with the ubiquity of television, which led to competition between networks and commercial pressures, as well as the power to influence people. The result was the breakdown of the original TV model in which news was somehow considered a public service and managed separately. From the 1970’s news came under the same pressure for ratings, and also pressure to promote the interest of corporate owners. Another result was that the homely, reliable figures like Walter Cronkite and Kenneth Kendall were pressured to be more entertainer than impartial journalist.

This all overlapped with other public trends. Attention spans became smaller at the same time as choice became larger and stress greater, so shallow sound bites and celebrity gossip became the news of choice for most.

Another trend is that the world became smaller, giving an impression of unmanageable complexity, just as people craved simplicity. There were always many wars, many intractable issues, many seeming contradictions, and few obvious solutions, few unalloyed heroes or villains and few happy endings. But somehow we could convince ourselves of the opposite, with the help of a bit of propaganda, censorship and genuine ignorance of things beyond our shores.

This last trend had a special impact in the US, since its self-assessed track record of being the good guy and always winning was being revealed as the lie that it always was, just as Hollywood was trying ever harder to perpetuate that lie, since that is what sells movie tickets.

Put all this together, and it still took a wonderfully prescient playwright to portray what could happen. Cranston has read straight news for 25 years, but has to read ever-more-simplified segments that still did not resolve pleasantly. Under ratings pressure, he is fired, but he has no other life so goes a bit wild and breaks from his script, saying “I’ve run out of bullshit”. A smart youngster in the commercial department, now merging with news, spots that the public would be entertained by more of this, and gets support from spineless executives to ride the Cranston horse further and further into deranged chaos. So long as he stays angry and mad, gains viewers, and does not veer from the message of the new Saudi money at the top of the channel, everything holds together - until it doesn’t.

Of course this more or less accurately predicted what happened to news since 1970. Fox News and its rivals rely on selectivity, anger and over-simplicity while promoting the political and commercial interests of owners. It garners ratings and eventually shapes politicians too, with the logical reduction ad absurdum being a Trump presidency. Social media has taken all the trends and amplified them further.

Perhaps most revealing to me was the tagline that the Cranston character descended to: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore”. Here, mad means angry, though the character is mad in the other sense too. The line brilliantly sums up how many people feel about the world. They are not ready for its complexity and look to people who offer comforting simplicity. It is not a bad way to sum up the mood of 60 million voters in November 2016. What a wonderful testament to a brilliant plot that is, and ample reason to revive it, despite the flaws.

Part of my thinking since watching Network has been to put myself in the position of a playwright now, imagining the world in 2040. I have not found this simple.

We have to start by adding in the new trends that had not developed by 1975. The first of these is social media, and its power to personalise. In the 1960’s we all watched the BBC (and its subtle propaganda). In the 2000’s we separated into three or four tribes with our own censored news from Fox or someone else. In the 2030’s we will have our own personal news – to an extent this has happened already, but it must accelerate.

Then, two other trends are more encouraging. I believe education has progressed, so that the next generation is more discerning and more able to judge fact from opinion and to embrace some complexity. At the same time that same generation is becoming more respectful of humanity in all its diversity and more at ease with themselves, and so less prone to anger and bigotry.

Put this together and you get a more nuanced picture. We will all get our own news, but the menu will cater to the curious as well as the angry, and more of us will be able to find content to help us develop and solve things rather than just rant, and more of us will be able to see through and reject corporate or other propaganda.

You already start to see this with Netflix. Hollywood’s stuff starts to look tired: it plays to the largest segment, but that segment gets smaller. Netflix can play to hundreds of subtly different segments, and content overall has improved as a result. The same will happen with news.

There will of course be missteps along the way. The excluded angry will find personalised material to make them yet more dangerous. And technology will make democracy and popularity move more quickly than most are ready for. Reputations will be made and lost in an instant, and instant plebiscites will lead to some horrible mistakes as majorities bully the oppressed.

But we will get through this and come out the other side better. I think my hypothetical play would be rather optimistic in tone. Of course, that means that my boss would probably toss it into the garbage as not being ratings-friendly enough.

However my play and other plays turn out, they will star no finer lead actor than Bryan Cranston.