Trying too hard

Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian Weekly had a nice example of a situation where we might try too hard in his article last week. The case in point was getting to sleep. I am truly blessed as a sleeper. I can sleep almost anywhere at almost any time, I love to sleep, and usually it does not take me more than a few minutes to doze off. Sometimes I wake in the night and feel too lively. Then I just go downstairs, drink some hot water, read a paper, and after all that I’m invariably ready to drop off again. The only times I end up tossing and turning are the first night in a hotel, when I have jet lag, or when I have an early alarm call. Thankfully, all those situations are rare nowadays.

Not everyone is as lucky as I am, and many would give much to improve their speed at getting to sleep. Burkeman discovered a book full of advice. Much of the advice feels sensible. Lay off caffeine and cheese after lunch. Eat early, and stop drinking alcohol and using electronics a couple of hours before bedtime. Keep the bedroom cool and dark.

Burkeman’s point is that putting effort into getting to sleep might make things worse. The brain might become even more active putting the news steps into practice and wondering what might be working and what not, with a result that sleep could become even harder to come by. The whole secret of getting to sleep is having an empty brain, so cluttering it up with tips can be counter-productive.

I half-buy this argument. Many of the tips are really just good lifestyle habits. Once they are in place you don’t think about them. True, if you happen to have a boozy night, you might then lose sleep worrying about losing sleep, but in most cases we can benefit from living smartly. One of the few things I don’t like about Spain and Portugal is the habit of eating rich food late.

I find getting to sleep a good example of separating inputs from results. The result is fast sleep. Aiming for the result is counter-productive, we just worry more and our brains get more and more agitated. But working on the drivers, the inputs, the leading indicators if you like, is worthwhile.

The same logic can be transferred directly into a business context. Twenty years ago scorecards and dashboards came into fashion. They are useful for keeping score, for handing out rewards and for holding managers to account. What they are usually less good for is driving actions. My boss can scream at me all he likes about growing profit, but it doesn’t help me in my work. Should I try harder to sell more? Or try to squeeze margins? Or spend less? All of these might grow profits, but all may do more harm than good. And even if they do grow profit, that is more likely to be next year than this.

To drive action, it is more useful to focus on leading indicators or drivers. These are things people can act on, that will usually create better outcomes later. It often makes sense to have two dashboards, one of the leading indicators and one of the outcomes. It is also a good exercise to try to establish what good leading indicators are.

There are many other good goals in life that should be treated as outcomes and strived for not directly but only through other factors. Think of popularity. If we try to too hard to popular, we will surely fail, and most things we try will only make the result worse. But it is possible to come up with many smart ways to live that might together lead to being popular. Justice might also fit into this category.

What about finding peace, or serenity, or even God? Don’t go looking to hard! In the case of God, some people look so hard that they see Him everywhere. Then He lets them down and they are broken. No, it is better to let such things come to you. Get the lifestyle right, get the attitude right, and perhaps the happy outcome will seek you out.

Burkeman’s piece also led me to other situations where it is smarter to lay off then to get directly involved.

We saw a beautiful example earlier this month, with the Scottish referendum. Once the polls started to get close, the English politicians all panicked, and started making speeches and even visiting Scotland. Everything they did made things worse. Even direct promises were not taken at face value but seen as evidence of some kind of malice. I think if I was Scottish I would have felt the same. Luckily, we got the right result, at least in my opinion, despite the best efforts of the English to secure the wrong one.

Another good example is when you have some dispute with your boss at work. Nowadays, we are often told to be active in difficult situations rather than hiding away. I believe that when there is a problem with the boss hiding can be a smarter strategy.

In simple terms a problem with the boss can be about you or it can be about him or her. If it is about you, then sort yourself out. Get some feedback from someone else, do what you need to do, demonstrate change, and perhaps the problem will go away.

If it is about him or her, then you start running risks. Often, a boss starts to take things out on staff when under performance pressure. The root cause of that is usually a lack of sufficient competence or a lack of sufficient competence. When suffering through that, the last thing the boss wants is a complaining staff member. Even if it starts with good intentions on both sides, the conversation can go horribly wrong. The boss will see every complaint as self-criticism. That piles problem on problem. At a certain point, the boss will think “I don’t need to take this from this person, they report to me not the other way around”. They will stop listening and start firing back. Things can escalate. Awkward history is created. Things finish worse than they started.

If you have a problem with your boss, and let’s face it most of us usually do, then back luck. I recommend subtler remedies than confrontation. First, make sure you only accept a job where you are confident that you can get on with the boss. A good boss is a passport to a happy job. Take a bad job with a good boss before a good job with a bad boss.

Once you are faced with the situation, be patient. You might get a move. More likely, he or she might get a move. There might be a reorganization, such things happen often enough. Wait it out, and stay out of the line of fire. While you are waiting, be rather cautious. Be very clear about expectations, and make sure you don’t give ammunition to get at you. Buddy up with others in the team to address issues together, indirectly. No matter how distasteful, try to make the boss seem good in front of his own boss and his colleagues.

There are many strategies, all usually better than confrontation. Going to HR with a complaint is the worst strategy of all, unless you are faced with something blatant like abuse.

Another situation to be careful is in a long-term relationship. Of course honesty and respect are great goals where attainable, but sometimes there are situations where a good outcome from an intervention is unrealistic. Than you face a choice. Get out, put up with the situation and try to manage it, or confront it. Before you confront it, make sure you are ready for the consequences.

One thing you can be sure if you choose to confront a relationship difficulty head on. You won’t be sleeping well for a while, whether you lay off alcohol and caffeine or whether you don’t.           

More Youthful Optimism

I have been sharing my theory of an optimistic future with others. I believe that the macro story today is pretty dire, with wars, hate and dysfunction everywhere you look, but that the micro story is more important in the long term. The micro story is that more and more people around the world are living more serene lives, at peace with themselves and their neighbours. Especially the young are healthier and more balanced than previous generations. In the end this augers well for humanity.

Well, the reception for this theory has not been overwhelmingly positive by any stretch. People don’t buy it. My dentist was typical. “You should see some of the kids that come in here”, she says, “they are distracted, unruly and morose.” When I quote my joyful experience at Princeton, people remind me that Princeton is the number one college in the land, nay the world, and that this does not represent any more general reality.

So I thought I’d take a step back. Might I just be deluding myself based on some isolated experiences and wishful thinking?

There is evidence to infer that younger generations can have a better chance than we had. Think of a typical family. Forty years ago Dad would go out to work, maybe at something physical, and would play little part in raising kids. This week’s NFL scandals have been harrowing, but for me the most telling quote came from Adrian Petersen. He regrets injuring his child with physical punishment, but claims that when he was growing up as a black in the South, everyone did it. This rings true, and I am not sure it didn’t apply to whites in the North as well. Dad’s role as head of the household didn’t add up to much more than chief disciplinarian.

Meanwhile Mum probably did not go out to work, so didn’t get to see much of society to stretch her brain. Her education had a lot of “home economics” and not much real economics. She spent much of her week doing housework. She would nurture the kids, but probably struggled to relate with them once they reached puberty. Dad and Mum stayed together, but would they show much intimacy in front of the kids?

The house was smaller and less well heated, and the kids might have had to share a bedroom. The family had perhaps just acquired a TV, but there was nothing on except at night when Dad chose what to watch. The family and friends were all very much like us, and we were hardly exposed to anyone very different, beyond the drunken groping uncle we saw at weddings and Christmas.

Many of the things we see in modern society and complain about are actually vast improvements on what came before. True, kids spend far too much time on their computers and mobiles today, but is that worse than crushing family boredom or hanging around street corners with mates? True, family units have become more complex, with divorce and diversity more common, and Mums are working now when before some were at home with the kids, but is that worse than the sterile monoculture we had before, fully of undiscussable items, and is a less available, but interesting and liberated Mum worse than the narrow woman who made us sit and play with rubbish jigsaws while she did endless household chores?

Now look at the classroom. We berate modern kids for low attention spans and lack of basic knowledge and grammar. I am not sure our attention span was any longer, we simply had fewer worthwhile distractions and were cowed by fear of bullying teachers. Nowadays, basic knowledge and grammar comes from Wikipedia and spellcheck, and educators have respond with challenging kids how to solve problems and to see nuanced arguments. When I see some of the homework assignments of the kids, I can only admire these changes.

The two great trends of our era, technology and globalization, have only helped our kids. We may hate mindless texting and endless cat videos, but we forget the good content that is there as well, and the fact that social media has made this generation more communicative and curious than ours, more able to find successful friendships, and able to take most of the fear from sex and relationships. Globalisation has offered more people the benefits of diversity and fed tolerance and curiosity.

Add in some other factors. Obesity has worsened, but that is about quantity, for quality has improved. We keep changing our minds on the details and many people don’t yet follow good practice, but at least we know now that fish and fruits are good for us, and these are widely available. Smoking has reduced as a curse. Even removing lead from petrol and some pesticides from fields have contributed to stronger mental health. Finally, psychology and sociology have progressed, so diagnoses and remedies for mental health have improved immeasurably.

So the micro story has every reason to be a happy one, and I firmly believe that the evidence I see with my own eyes is significant. I am supported by the excellent trends in crime figures and reducing mental disorders, and even by such things as reductions in teenage pregnancy across much of the world. I believe most of us make the timeless mistake of judging by our outdated standards and condemning things we don’t really understand. I reckon I was pretty unruly at the dentist as well, even though I was more likely to be bored stupid by “Country Life” and scared of a cuffing from Mum than distracted by “Minecraft”.

I am also not fully convinced that the macro story is so bad either, horrific though this summer has been. I think we are misled by the ubiquity of information. Those of us who would rather see news than celebrity gossip now have much more international news available than we used to. There used to be just as many wars and just as much hatred before, it is just that most of it was outside our earshot. Consider, we did not even know there were Sunnis and Shias. Further, establishment bias was even worse than that it is now. All the horrible proxy wars the US and USSR fought in Africa and Asia were largely kept from our view, or portrayed in hopelessly biased ways.

I was struck when I read the book “Jerusalem” by Simon Sebag Montefiore last year. We all think the Arab Israeli conflict is horrific and that the twentieth century was the most violent in history, but it seems that there have been pogroms and destruction pretty well every century there. We read about Ukraine, but it pales in comparison with the Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot, about which we read little and understood less.

What is different now is that we can clearly see the potential for humanity, and we are frustrated by our inability to realize that full potential, especially when that is through wanton acts by people and governments that should know better. When all it was we learned in history was a list of kings of England, and all we saw on TV was establishment sponsored drivel, we did not have that privilege. We can celebrate it, and try to also celebrate how far we have come as well as bemoaning how far we still have to travel.

And travel we will, ever faster, though with bumps in the road, thanks to our more educated and smarter youth, and the even smarter youth that will follow them. What seems normal now in the West will soon be normal in Asia and even much of Africa, while the West will look back on this age as ill-informed and barbaric. I believe. I even think I am right, and not just delusional. Even if I am wrong, the thought helps me stay cheerful – something else I recommend heartily.      

A Charter for the new Non-Aligned

The news this summer has been unremittingly bleak. The Syrian civil war has killed many and displaced millions. Libya is rapidly descending into an ungovernable disaster like Somalia, while South Sudan, Mali and parts of Nigeria have similar problems. Tensions are steadily racheting up between China and its neighbours. Israel and Hamas resumed their periodic pointless fighting. We have a true war in Europe once again, in Eastern Ukraine. And a new menace has grown rapidly in the shape of IS, a menace that threatens to spread and quite possibly is planning a “spectacular” somewhere in the US or in Europe. If that were to happen, then who knows where a knee jerk response by the US could lead. Meanwhile a pandemic threatens much of Africa, while the Mediterranean body count continues to grow as the EU looks the other way.

I don’t think there have been such dangerous times since the Cuban crisis over fifty years ago. Some have compared Syria to the Spanish Civil war, which seems both apt and frightening. It is hard to stay positive. One way I succeed is in observing a micro-story playing out in parallel with the horrendous macro-story. The micro-story tells of today’s youth in developed countries enjoying unprecedented levels of physical and mental health. Despite everything, this has to bode well.

In the macro-story, there are some common themes. One theme is the breakdown of effective response, with the US government paralysed, and the UN Security Council reverting to cold war irrelevance. Another theme is the gradual erosion of an established world order, as nations and groups rebel against an ever more tenuous status quo. And a linked theme is distrust of USA the hegemon.

Yesterday, on the same day that a US journalist was killed by IS accompanied by a chilling video condemning US arrogance, the US itself announced that it had killed the leader of Al Shabab in Somalia. I could not help notice a link. Much though it can be defended to send drones to murder leaders who appear to play by barbarian rules, the upshot is sure to be more disgruntled families and communities turning to rebellion.

It is not easy being Obama or Kerry. They are left to suffer the backlash from the appalling acts of their predecessors. Their political room for manoeuvre at home is limited. Supposed allies are hypocritical. Whatever the problem, the USA is expected to find a solution and is blamed whichever way it chooses to turn. If they act, they are arrogant, but if they don’t they are callous. Catch 22 is alive and well in the White House.

However, it is instructive to create a charge sheet against the USA, if only to start to understand where extreme anger can feed and grow. It is quite a sobering list.

The USA treats the UN as a buffet menu, gorging when it suits and disdaining otherwise. Many sound global accords remain ungratified by the US. Meanwhile, it maintains military bases and sea lanes around the world just like any colonist. Diplomacy is backed by an insidious covert operation, one not averse to stealing any information, using hapless US corporate interests as servants. Financial power is abused openly, while key economic bodies are always led from the West. Most aid is given as deadly weapons, notably to an ally maintaining a brutal illegal occupation and expanding via illegal settlements. A crippling embargo is maintained on a near neighbour out of nothing more than pique. Invasions are inflicted on others, while many of its own citizens are incarcerated, via a social and economic model fostering levels of inequality not seen since the days of Downton Abbey, all the while touting freedom and liberty, whatever they mean. Public opinion is bought largely via money, with few checks or balances – one consequence is that Miami is already doomed to sink.

It is a grim list, though of course no worse than any former hegemon’s. Read it, and consider why China may struggle to fully embrace the UN itself and is reluctant to rescind territorial claims. It becomes easier to understand Russia or Iran as well. While IS is totally indefensible and in no way comparable, it does help to understand how it can find willing recruits.

Given the extreme risks we now face, I called some weeks ago for nations to join a new non-aligned movement. This solution might have a small chance of success, more than any other strategy being employed today, as it might slowly force change on the US while reconciling everyone else. A goal for such a movement should be that China, India and Germany should be among the founder members. I gave some thought to what the charter for such a movement might contain. Here is what I came up with.

Our members support all UN agencies and ratify all UN protocols.

We believe in arms reduction. 50% of our defence capability is reserved for the collective security of our members, and we do not provide arms to non-members. We do not seek military alliances outside the group, aiming to eliminate existing alliances over time. All of our security activity is overt and transparent: we have no hidden or secret capabilities. The armed forces of our members have no political role.

We guarantee a growing list of human rights for our citizens. Citizens are free to practice and religion and cultural practices that do not harm the human rights of others, while the state shows no preference for or sponsorship of any religion or ethnic group.

Our members have plural political and judicial institutions and media. Politicians are elected, with term limits restricting tenure, or otherwise have purely titular functions. We have active devolution of power, while also surrendering power to the UN or this member’s body where appropriate. Over time our passports should mean less as a result. We work towards free movement between all member states.

We recognise that global issues require global responses and support relevant expert bodies, even when these dictate allowable domestic policies. Such issues include the environment, cyber security and criminal law. In Economics, they include promoting trade and eliminating subsidies, harmonising corporate and personal taxation for cross-border entities.

We emphasise human development, subscribing to aggressive development goals and investing collectively to achieve them with 2% of GDP reserved for common development in health, education, housing and social support.

Member states may be in periods of transition towards these goals, but they must accept them and accept binding external recommendations towards achieving them. Disputes between members, including of territorial claims, are to be resolved via binding arbitration processes. Historical anomalies from colonial times should be corrected over time, though nations should not be held liable for past excesses.

Representation on our political bodies will reflect population, but on expert bodies will reflect relevant expertise.

As a global citizen, I would love to campaign for such a body, and I believe momentum could be built, as a counter-weight to the insular politics of our times. The charter balances sticks and carrots for developed and developing nations. I suspect most people under thirty in the world would see the attraction of such a development.

I won’t hold my breath for much happening along these lines. But perhaps there is more hope for this type of remedy than any other just at the moment. It is amazing what new technology can achieve.     

The Curse of Victimhood

The week before last I visited the Guggenheim museum in New York. That is always a wonderful experience. The main exhibition this time was about futurist Italian art of the first half of the twentieth century. This was excellent, but the show that has lingered in my mind is a smaller piece of contemporary art from Latin America.

Much of this exhibition was too modern for me, and few individual pieces resonated. What did come through was a theme. Almost all the pieces were inspired as a protest against the legacy in Latin America of the USA.

It was almost as if these artists could not release themselves from a feeling of victimhood. Rather than expressing anything at all about their own cultures, they chose instead to rebel against another one.

It is possible, of course, that the location for the exhibition had led the curators to choose works of a particular theme. But I doubt it. I have seen earlier examples of the same thing, for example in a documentary I saw a couple of years ago. And it clear from the politics of the region that only recently have a few countries started to escape from the politics of protest to those of development.

To their credit, all people from the USA that I have spoken to about the exhibition expressed the same sentiment. None are surprised, and all are ashamed of the legacy of their own country. We should not forget that this negative legacy still persists, for example in the outdated embargo of Cuba, the perverse effects of US drug policy, and failed coups as recently as the last decade in Venezuela. But for me it offers some hope that US citizens, at least in my biased sample, can see their bullying for what it is. For that is an important precursor to change. It will be a while before similar sentiments occur as widely in regard to other places, such as Iraq or China.

Why might it be that such a victim mentality becomes so pervasive? Thinking about it, it might be because the mentality is so seductive.

What can be easier than assuming a victim role? In almost everything we do, there is some justification, for life is never fair. Once we position ourselves as victim, nothing can ever be our fault, as there is always someone else to blame for any outcome. We don’t even need to solve much, as we can dwell in the past and mentally expect our bully to solve our problems for us.

Further, as a politician, stirring up victim status is a sure-fire vote winner. We all have grudges. Emphasising them creates empathy, as well as absolving the politician from any need to promote any positive policies.

Examples are everywhere. In the political world, start with any ex-colony, which of course covers pretty well everyone. Then look at any minority – riots in Ferguson are rooted in a sense of victimhood dated back to slavery and the civil rights movement.

This week, an excellent essay in the Economist tried to establish a winning foreign policy towards China based on trying to get inside the Chinese mind. It will be no surprise to learn that a sense of victimhood may the biggest driver. Chinese feel victims of perceived injustice from Japan and others from the nineteenth century. They also struggle to see why they should act responsibly themselves in global affairs, while the US chooses to have airbases in neighbouring countries, to defend (in Taiwan) what they see as a historical anachronism, and to invade anywhere it likes on the flimsiest of pretexts. It is so much easier to focus on the perceived guilt of others rather than on our own responsibilities. Russia and Ukraine is not so different a story.

Then there is the Middle East. Hamas will cut off its own nose to spite its face over the injustices of Israel. It is very hard for Iran to reach any nuclear deal appearing to let the perceived root cause of its victimhood off the hook. Now we have IS. If ever there is a group grounded on victimhood, this is it, and it is a mistake to assume that few will follow such an extreme ideology.

Sadly, commentary in the West shows that there is little intelligent thinking about such matters. People consider only military or economic options to weaken them – options which of course will only strengthen the victimhood and widen the appeal. You would have thought we would have learned this lesson by now. Instead, we have to understand root causes and work painstakingly to remove justifiable grievances.

So we can conclude that most of us can feel victims about our national or religious history. But that is just the start. At work, we all have bosses or former bosses who have turned us into victims. We can resent the lot of our gender, race or sexual orientation. We can curse former lovers or even current ones. And, perhaps most of all, come our parents. Nearly all of us have slipped into blame mode about our parents at some stage.

Individual victimhood is just as damaging as collective victimhood. Take depression or addiction. We know that guilt and shame are usually root causes. Denial stops us addressing these. And behind the denial lies victimhood – why we can moan that the world isn’t fair, we can avoid facing up to our problems. It is not a coincidence that twelve step programmes start with denial and its causes, or that religions emphasise the benefits of counting our blessings.

So victimhood is everywhere, it is seductive and it is completely debilitating. The other issue is that it sticks around for generations, finding ways to feed itself. Any slight can feed the victim’s grievance. I lived in Northern Ireland so witnessed at first hand how entrenched victimhood can become.

So I started thinking about possible lessons and discovered two.

The first lesson is obvious. It is about what to do if we find ourselves slipping into a victim mentality. It is not difficult to see the signs, and it is clear that we have to fight them. Counting our blessings is a great start. Getting honest feedback is good too. Distrusting politicians and others who lure us into victimhood can only do good. Seductive it may be, but victimhood only does us damage.

But the more interesting lesson is to look at the issue from the other side. What if I am the bully in this relationship, the one that induces victimhood in others?

There is a wonderful current example of this, in the form of the upcoming Scottish referendum. The hypocrisy of most of us English is stunning. At the same time that we cast ourselves as victims of the EU, we fail to note the parallel to our own role vis a vis Scotland. When considering the EU, we only think with our hearts. But for Scotland, we only think with our heads. In one case emotion trumps logic, in the other logic trumps emotion.

One lesson is to be aware of this. Logic can help us from failing into a victim mentality. But logic is pretty useless when trying to persuade a victim to change, especially when we are seen as the bully. Our logic only makes things worse.

Hence Cameron or Osborne or the “English” press lecturing or threatening Scots about such matters as sharing the pound is totally counter-productive. The reaction is to dig in further. The whole No campaign has been hopelessly misguided.

Luckily, we have Alaistair Darling. It is conceivable that this rather modest and geeky man could go down as the leading British hero of the last ten years. His performance as chancellor during the financial crash was superb, despite utter chaos going on around him in the form of a deranged boss. Now he may have kept the union together with his classy defeat of Alex Salmond in the TV referendum debate.

So the lessons are clear. If you might be bully, lay off, don’t try to coax the victim with logic, you will only make things worse. Leave it to others, preferably wise voices from the victim camp itself, to make your arguments. Further, be aware that anything you do or say will probably be misinterpreted and used to feed the victimhood. So say and do little. If you have to do something, use third parties, inordinate care, and complete transparency. Ferguson police department take note. Finally, always try to understand and acknowledge the justifiable grievances, with humility and context. Only that way can we painstakingly work at reducing those grievances.

So as usual a museum trip paid a great dividend, in a surprising way. Thank you Guggenheim creators and suffering Latin American artists, though I hope you are not reading this since my logic will probably only deepen your anger. By the same token, Scots, I’d dearly love you to vote No, but I doubt whether asking you to will do any good.