"Obliquity" is a 2010 work by John Kay expanding on an essay he wrote for the financial times on 17 January 2004. Having only been 13 in 2004, it is hard to say how novel the concept must have seen then, but what i feel is very clear is that the idea neither needed repetition over 21 chapters; or adds anything novel now.
Certainly the basic concept is a profound one, and one i'm sure many of us understand or identify instictively: that to achieve what Kay describes as "high-level objectives" (eg. running a successfull business; managing developments of cities; praising God) a direct approach is not only often inappropriate but less effective. For instance, Kay shows how those who set out specifically to make money are rarely as rich as those who seek to improve human understanding of science or have their business make a meaningful contribution to society. Equally, those who set out directly in the pursuit of happiness in a hedonistic indulgent approach to life are rarely as happy as those who undergo essentially self-inflicted hardship such as climbing a mountain or raising children. In more concrete terms this also results in those apparently paradoxical or "brain-teaser" problems and riddles that we all so often relish: for example travelling west-east along the panama canal to make the shortest journey east-west from the atlantic to the pacific and the dog running four times as fast as the master in the "go-and-return" problem.
And certainly, if the main objective of the development of the book was research and collection of further examples to express the point, the work is incredibly successful: 200 pages are chock full of paintings; chess-players; forest management; football players and (perhaps where Kay excells most) business anecdotes on huge names like Boeing and Ford. However, whereas in many ways the main benefit of the financial times article was its ability to summate this broad, amorphous idea of "thinking outside the box" into the neat little word "obliquity" (or pursuing objetives obliquely) the book loses a lot of that punch by trying to unravel a broader conept of high level objectives, intermediary goals and the applicability of models. In brief i think these awkward extensions can be almot entirely summed up in the two examples he himself gives:
1) The 3 stonemasons: when three stonemasons are building a church each i asked what he is doing. The firrst says "cutting a stone" the second "building a cathedral" and the third "glorifying god". The point being that the most successful stonemason will be the third who is pursuing a "high level objective" even though these need to be expressed practically in intermediary actions. The nature of an uncertain world and the the uncertainty even of your objective means that these intermediary actions should be flexible to change over time explaining why great cathedrals like Notre Damme were conceieved very diferently by different architects over hundreds of years.
2) The late bus: after waiting 15 minutes for a bus which should arrive every 10 the question no longer remains when the bus will arrive according to the model (which suggests the longer you wait the higher the chance it will arrive any second) but whether or not your model is appropriate at all.
But that's sort of it. The rest of the book is largely filled with repetitions of points he has already made and it is difficult not to feel that the Daniel Crewew of Profile Books listed in the acknowledgements as "urging me to develop the argument into a book" has forced a writer i have nothing but the highest regard for, into stretching the argument needlessly thin for the purpose of attracting a dim audience both captivating by the obliquity "buzz-word" and who need this concept reaffirmation to understand the idea. Perhaps i'm being pompous. More often than not i've wished an author could have repeated his point to consolidate my understanding of what he meant and here maybe it was only my pre-existing understanding which made that irritating.
But beyond that, there isn't even any development. From page 1 the burning question i kept waiting to be explained was "so what?". If problems are best solved obliquely, what does that practically mean i should do? Do i directly try and approach problems obliquely now? Does that even make sense? There seems to be something of a roadblock paradox at the end of the argument. If i know that not pursuing happiness is the best way to pursue happiness; does that not mean i really am just directly pursing happiness? I don't understand. And it concerns me that there doesn't seem to be a particular desire for this to be understood either. It's rather reminiscient of any number of articles which points out a problem and then fails to suggest a solution. "That pipe has rusted so very soon it's going to fall through and all the water flood the house. Well, isn't that a stimulating and interesting problem". Yes. But that alone is of little to no help. I already know that pursuing problems obliquely can provide better answers: we've heard about "thinking outside the box" and solving riddles outside the confines of the structures they create. But that in itself doesn't help us do anything new. It doesn't help us identify when, where and how to do that. The closest he comes is a description of "problems whose answer is as uncertain as the means of solving it". But this describes almost every difficult problem. We already know "leading a fulfilling life" is a more complex problem than "how to win at naughts and crosses" so what are we adding by labelling it as a difuse objective, plagued with uncertainties?
As far as i can see, not very much.
Saturday, 16 March 2013
Monday, 11 March 2013
A Short Guide to Life, the World and the People who inhabit it - Society
As a blog dedicated to little more than the archiving and (hopefully) refining of one man's thoughts; i thought today as an appropriate as any to start something of a series on my limited current wisdom as to what these big questions are all about. In this object i am perhaps overly conservative, but if what i say might be enlightening or even least though-provoking then know i have already exceeded my remit. However, i am trying my best to resist an apology for something which is not even written yet and which i do not think i honestly believe should be apologied for. I hope it goes without saying that, in the words of a similarly distinguished philosopher "this advice has no other basis than my own meandering experience" and at 20 i recognise i have had a lot less experience than many. Nevertheless, what wisdom i have now remains the best i have, and i feel apologising for it is an injustice to those teachers who have instilled me with it. So let us hope that if we do look back on these with shame and embarassment, it is not because because we explored ideas that turned out to be wrong; but that we have refined and improved our thoughts long since. Future me; i make no apology for the pomp and circumstance!
What is "Society"?
So today's entry is on the topic of society. What is it? What's it for ? Is it a good thing? The impetus comes from an article i was reccomended by a friend which aimed, as i understand it, to shake people out of the apathy so often associated with modern society and value themselves only as an expression of their contribution to society; "what can you offer?". This is indeed a noble pursuit, and i am wary of falling into the very group of slothish moaners who try to refute the arguments laid out as a means of egotistically self-affirming my life choices. This is not my intention. Rather, it is perhaps just worth clearly expressing that i think all of his "harsh truths" are substantially true and that even his blunt direct style is justified in its need to penetrate what he rightly identifies as people's in-built resentment towards positive change. However, to use a phrase i borrow from a number of works by John Kay, although his points are englightening; they are not true (at least as simply as Wong states them, without much allusion to justification).
First of all, i want to address the postulation that "all the world [society] cares about is what it can get from you", because although i think it would be foolish to deny its basic truth, we are loathe to do so because isntinctively we recognise that it raises a number of more complicated questions. That is to say, why does all society care about what it can get from us? Should this be the case? Is that the very nature of society? Or is this immoral? And something we should be striving against? Although not directly stated in Wong's work, there is a clear understanding behind the piece that the author feels the former is true and the latter irrelevant. Ie. That the very nature of society is to bring together groups of people with different needs so that by working to satisfy the needs of the other all are benefitted. Certainly that would seem the tenor of one of the videos he links in the article, and in many ways this is only a broad-brush restatement of Adam Smith's "invsible hand" theory - one of the most important theoretical foundations of capitalism and the economic structure of western society, and indeed societies globally.
But even without focusing on modern capitalism I think this characterisation of "society" as essentially transactional makes very tangible sense. We can envisage a world in which people do not cooperate under a such a structure as that we call "society" and instead just fend for their own needs and can identify that such an environment is not highly conducive to innovation and development nor offers a very high standard of living. Rather, Hobbes would famously say that this type of existence was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" and with this i think we all would largely agree. On the other hand, we might strongly disagree about Hobbe's postulation that this is the "natural state" of man - a question essentially of philosophy or anthropology: given man's limited ability for altruism are we more naturally disposed to cooperate with others or to selfishly pursue our own survival? The answer will of course differ drastically depending on your evaluation on the nature of people. So, to lay my cards perhaps prematurely on the table i will say that i am optimistic. To me the glass is half-full and that on balance, people in general have a greater natural/biologically-programmed disposicion to be altruistic than they do to be selfish, even if that margin is very slight or not directly translateable into individual cases (particular individuals may be very selfish or very altruistic but we are generalising about the whole of humanity as a species). This attitude i feel is most strongly supported in one of HLA Hart's explanation for the existence of legal systems - or any other such system of rules which we could considerably sufficiently frames peoples actions to call it a "society" - that they are only necessary because people are not entirely evil (if we were all devils nobody would ever follow any law) and only possible because we are not all perfectly good (if we were all angels there would be no need for binding systems of rules). However, my understanding is that it is also supported by scientific anthropology and biology as well: that from the knolwedge we have collected man has, on average, a greater disposition to pursue the interests of the collective above and beyond the interests of only himself. He will feed children when there is none for himself; he will fight dangers which threaten the lives of others in the community and he will do this on average to a greater degree than he will feed only himself and run from danger he does not need to face. But this could be due to my limited knowledge in the field, and of course not only would i welcome more information on the evidence and indeed hope to revisit the issue in a dedicated study.
What Should "Society" be?
In any case, this leads us very quickly onto our next question. If the nature of society is a mechanism for satisfying the exchange of goods and skills to better serve the needs of the individual and, indirectly the needs of the community as a whole; we must ask ourselves if we think this is correct? Is this moral? Or should we ask something more of the system?
My immdiate response to these questions is simply "yes." But perhaps this is due to the particular views i hold as to morality and the what defines the aims of societies and the moralities they propogate. For, to me, as it has been pointed out many times before, there can be no morality without the fundamental assumption that the preservation of human life is our highest goal. This is the conrnerstone from which all the "basic" universal precepts of morality are drawn - everyone can only agree "murder" is bad if we can agree that life is good; similarly charity and medicine can only be good if preserving life is a worthwhile goal to pursue. And as i understand it, this is an essentially arbitrary starting point. It is our grundnorm. Nothing makes sense without it and eveything is based on it as a presumption. And, from a biological standpoint i think this is both logical and justified: as a species we have evolved a biological disposition to see preservation of the species as a good thing. Those who did not died and therefore did not pass their genes on to the next generation and so those of us that did are genetically disposed to have feelings of "joy" or "fulfilment" in the successful service of others [and those who do not feel feelings of 'shame' or 'guilt' at the purely seflish pursuit of one's own interests are generally considered biological anomolies an sociopaths]. And so whether or not is fits with other the moral objectives we derive from it (e.g preservation of the environment) the primary importance of preserving human life makes it a non-negotiable objective (e.g we are generally opposed to mass suicide to stop environmental damage).
Though this makes it no less arbitrary. For instance, logically we might equate, say, animal life to human life society would consider the death of a monkey to save the life of a human, absent other factors, to the the morally correct choice. This has no logical basis other than the arbitrary starting point that humans are bioligcally programmed to think that way. And so any discussion is what is "right" for humanity i feel must come back to adress the fundamental question - does it encourage the preservation of the species?
And in this sense, the model of "society" we have thus described seems to do exactly that: By trading skills and resources to better service the needs of each individual in the grand picture, we are better able to improve the standard of living of those individuals and thus increase the likelihood of the propogation of our species. Now, you might ask though, have we not evolved past this? Have we not sufficiently overcome the needs of basic subsistence that society must aim at some greater object for its morality and existence than simply survival? To this i would respond that firstly, such ideas are clearly skewed by privileged western society and should look to the numbers of starving children before talking of having overcome the struggle for survival. But beyond this i think there is a broader point. Even if we could feed everyone and ensure a high standard of living for every single human being on the planet, we cannot escape the primacy of life as a biological disposition. And this is the second place where Wong's article over-simplifies the issue. For the hippies were not entirely "wrong". What they realised in their reaction to 1950's (and indeed victorian) conservatism was that we cannot wholy deny our base urges and instincts. In the most cases this is useful and indeed necessary (we must resist the urge to fall asleep whilst driving a car; and to stab the stranger who insults us if we hope to preserve the safety and therefore life of the members of society). But what the reactionary Hippie movement, whether directly or not, recognised was that the goal underlying these rejections is itself the preservation of life. And therefore, rejections of things like sex and support of things like war, can only make sense in very narrow circumstances.
And to that extent, yes. We can expect more from society. We can expect love (sexual, romantic, brotherly and parental) and compassion because these things directly contribute to the preservation of the species but also things like art and imagination because these things indirectly contribute to innovation and development via the same process of specialisation that allows for the creation of the computer mouse: if everyone is preoccupied with a particular task of production or service; somebody needs to be individualls tasked with the job of design or inspiring change. Whether or not we should reward those who make these contributions in a very indirect and insubstantial way; or claim to be doing so whilst really just indulging our baser passion without the indirect goal of preserving life (e.g pop-stars; hollywood actors; etc) in the amounts we do is another question. But perhaps an issue for another day.
Fianl Thoughts
In sum, we are biologically predisposed to see preservation of the human species as our highest objective and so your value as a member of society will be measured in its effect (direct or indirect) to help attain that goal. But this neither means the hippies were wrong or that society is unjustified in expecting your contribution. Rather it is the only thing which holds together our common humanity. It is what gives us the basis for morality, and a reason to live.
What is "Society"?
So today's entry is on the topic of society. What is it? What's it for ? Is it a good thing? The impetus comes from an article i was reccomended by a friend which aimed, as i understand it, to shake people out of the apathy so often associated with modern society and value themselves only as an expression of their contribution to society; "what can you offer?". This is indeed a noble pursuit, and i am wary of falling into the very group of slothish moaners who try to refute the arguments laid out as a means of egotistically self-affirming my life choices. This is not my intention. Rather, it is perhaps just worth clearly expressing that i think all of his "harsh truths" are substantially true and that even his blunt direct style is justified in its need to penetrate what he rightly identifies as people's in-built resentment towards positive change. However, to use a phrase i borrow from a number of works by John Kay, although his points are englightening; they are not true (at least as simply as Wong states them, without much allusion to justification).
First of all, i want to address the postulation that "all the world [society] cares about is what it can get from you", because although i think it would be foolish to deny its basic truth, we are loathe to do so because isntinctively we recognise that it raises a number of more complicated questions. That is to say, why does all society care about what it can get from us? Should this be the case? Is that the very nature of society? Or is this immoral? And something we should be striving against? Although not directly stated in Wong's work, there is a clear understanding behind the piece that the author feels the former is true and the latter irrelevant. Ie. That the very nature of society is to bring together groups of people with different needs so that by working to satisfy the needs of the other all are benefitted. Certainly that would seem the tenor of one of the videos he links in the article, and in many ways this is only a broad-brush restatement of Adam Smith's "invsible hand" theory - one of the most important theoretical foundations of capitalism and the economic structure of western society, and indeed societies globally.
But even without focusing on modern capitalism I think this characterisation of "society" as essentially transactional makes very tangible sense. We can envisage a world in which people do not cooperate under a such a structure as that we call "society" and instead just fend for their own needs and can identify that such an environment is not highly conducive to innovation and development nor offers a very high standard of living. Rather, Hobbes would famously say that this type of existence was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" and with this i think we all would largely agree. On the other hand, we might strongly disagree about Hobbe's postulation that this is the "natural state" of man - a question essentially of philosophy or anthropology: given man's limited ability for altruism are we more naturally disposed to cooperate with others or to selfishly pursue our own survival? The answer will of course differ drastically depending on your evaluation on the nature of people. So, to lay my cards perhaps prematurely on the table i will say that i am optimistic. To me the glass is half-full and that on balance, people in general have a greater natural/biologically-programmed disposicion to be altruistic than they do to be selfish, even if that margin is very slight or not directly translateable into individual cases (particular individuals may be very selfish or very altruistic but we are generalising about the whole of humanity as a species). This attitude i feel is most strongly supported in one of HLA Hart's explanation for the existence of legal systems - or any other such system of rules which we could considerably sufficiently frames peoples actions to call it a "society" - that they are only necessary because people are not entirely evil (if we were all devils nobody would ever follow any law) and only possible because we are not all perfectly good (if we were all angels there would be no need for binding systems of rules). However, my understanding is that it is also supported by scientific anthropology and biology as well: that from the knolwedge we have collected man has, on average, a greater disposition to pursue the interests of the collective above and beyond the interests of only himself. He will feed children when there is none for himself; he will fight dangers which threaten the lives of others in the community and he will do this on average to a greater degree than he will feed only himself and run from danger he does not need to face. But this could be due to my limited knowledge in the field, and of course not only would i welcome more information on the evidence and indeed hope to revisit the issue in a dedicated study.
What Should "Society" be?
In any case, this leads us very quickly onto our next question. If the nature of society is a mechanism for satisfying the exchange of goods and skills to better serve the needs of the individual and, indirectly the needs of the community as a whole; we must ask ourselves if we think this is correct? Is this moral? Or should we ask something more of the system?
My immdiate response to these questions is simply "yes." But perhaps this is due to the particular views i hold as to morality and the what defines the aims of societies and the moralities they propogate. For, to me, as it has been pointed out many times before, there can be no morality without the fundamental assumption that the preservation of human life is our highest goal. This is the conrnerstone from which all the "basic" universal precepts of morality are drawn - everyone can only agree "murder" is bad if we can agree that life is good; similarly charity and medicine can only be good if preserving life is a worthwhile goal to pursue. And as i understand it, this is an essentially arbitrary starting point. It is our grundnorm. Nothing makes sense without it and eveything is based on it as a presumption. And, from a biological standpoint i think this is both logical and justified: as a species we have evolved a biological disposition to see preservation of the species as a good thing. Those who did not died and therefore did not pass their genes on to the next generation and so those of us that did are genetically disposed to have feelings of "joy" or "fulfilment" in the successful service of others [and those who do not feel feelings of 'shame' or 'guilt' at the purely seflish pursuit of one's own interests are generally considered biological anomolies an sociopaths]. And so whether or not is fits with other the moral objectives we derive from it (e.g preservation of the environment) the primary importance of preserving human life makes it a non-negotiable objective (e.g we are generally opposed to mass suicide to stop environmental damage).
Though this makes it no less arbitrary. For instance, logically we might equate, say, animal life to human life society would consider the death of a monkey to save the life of a human, absent other factors, to the the morally correct choice. This has no logical basis other than the arbitrary starting point that humans are bioligcally programmed to think that way. And so any discussion is what is "right" for humanity i feel must come back to adress the fundamental question - does it encourage the preservation of the species?
And in this sense, the model of "society" we have thus described seems to do exactly that: By trading skills and resources to better service the needs of each individual in the grand picture, we are better able to improve the standard of living of those individuals and thus increase the likelihood of the propogation of our species. Now, you might ask though, have we not evolved past this? Have we not sufficiently overcome the needs of basic subsistence that society must aim at some greater object for its morality and existence than simply survival? To this i would respond that firstly, such ideas are clearly skewed by privileged western society and should look to the numbers of starving children before talking of having overcome the struggle for survival. But beyond this i think there is a broader point. Even if we could feed everyone and ensure a high standard of living for every single human being on the planet, we cannot escape the primacy of life as a biological disposition. And this is the second place where Wong's article over-simplifies the issue. For the hippies were not entirely "wrong". What they realised in their reaction to 1950's (and indeed victorian) conservatism was that we cannot wholy deny our base urges and instincts. In the most cases this is useful and indeed necessary (we must resist the urge to fall asleep whilst driving a car; and to stab the stranger who insults us if we hope to preserve the safety and therefore life of the members of society). But what the reactionary Hippie movement, whether directly or not, recognised was that the goal underlying these rejections is itself the preservation of life. And therefore, rejections of things like sex and support of things like war, can only make sense in very narrow circumstances.
And to that extent, yes. We can expect more from society. We can expect love (sexual, romantic, brotherly and parental) and compassion because these things directly contribute to the preservation of the species but also things like art and imagination because these things indirectly contribute to innovation and development via the same process of specialisation that allows for the creation of the computer mouse: if everyone is preoccupied with a particular task of production or service; somebody needs to be individualls tasked with the job of design or inspiring change. Whether or not we should reward those who make these contributions in a very indirect and insubstantial way; or claim to be doing so whilst really just indulging our baser passion without the indirect goal of preserving life (e.g pop-stars; hollywood actors; etc) in the amounts we do is another question. But perhaps an issue for another day.
Fianl Thoughts
In sum, we are biologically predisposed to see preservation of the human species as our highest objective and so your value as a member of society will be measured in its effect (direct or indirect) to help attain that goal. But this neither means the hippies were wrong or that society is unjustified in expecting your contribution. Rather it is the only thing which holds together our common humanity. It is what gives us the basis for morality, and a reason to live.
Sitting Under Shady Trees
As in quiet rumination he sat,
It would be from the tree,
that a single fruit of knowledge would fall.
Let's leave it at that.
It would be from the tree,
that a single fruit of knowledge would fall.
Let's leave it at that.
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