Month: October 2019

A lot of people have been bemoaning my cynicism recently.  My typical, overused retort is that “I’m not cynical, I’m realistic.”  I say “realistic” because I believe people will act consistently over time, and furthermore, that in an inconceivably complex but still comprehensible world, people’s choices – and thus their tendency to make similar choices in the future – can be extrapolated from a sufficiently large set of observations of their current state.  But I’m also willing to learn, to change, and to be disproven.  That to me is realism – or pragmatism, to use the word favored by Charles Pierce and William James.  But it consists of two parts; which I think is misunderstood, at least with me.  That is, both the observations which lead to a given set to expectations about future behavior, and the separate but just as important willingness to continue to observe, make adjustments, and throw away prior expectations, are equally important.  Viewing me through the light of one without the other misses the point.

Continue reading “An earnest response”

I suppose I’ve always wanted to write a prose poem.  What I’ve been trying to write here, in all its all, is just that, but I know it’s lacking, even across time and space and in the spinning gyre that is my work.  A prose poem would evoke the autumn sky I see when I look out the window of my apartment, would capture the sing song pitch of my son as he interrupts my work, would find a way to bring the scent of bacon and overripe pear and coffee and gin to the page.  But I can’t write a prose poem.  I can only write.  And prepare the bath for my son, warm air rising as he yawns on the couch, trying to delay the inevitable, the sound of radio baseball and thunder outside.  My prose poems are long and wandering, and I can’t find the source.  I still want to write a prose poem.

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…”

– Preamble to the American Constitution

We — Mark, his guest, Peter and I — enjoyed a leisurely weekend together. We ate amazing food, drank cocktails and shared our thoughts regarding the political and cultural climate of our respective countries. While we walked the beach, soaking in the last remnants of summer, we found that in each of our homelands — UK, USA and Canada — chasms are deepening about what the ‘People’ desire for their future. In the UK, the People want Brexit. In the USA, the People voted Trump into office, electing him in part because so many voters resented the Establishment or didn’t bother to vote.  While Canada has remained immune to the rising wave of right-wing nationalism — until now at least — we are no stranger to identity politics: we play them since Trudeau’s father was in office in the 1970s, when Quebec’s nationalism was in full swing!

From an economic perspective, these events express the People’s desire to bring back the past. A slogan such as “Make America Great Again” — as powerful as it might be — cannot roll back the systemic changes brought on by globalizing technologies. Nor, for that matter, a separation from the European Union. Even though leaving the EU is a more tangible and consequential change in the political fabric of a shared social reality, such a reversal of policy still can’t bring back the heyday of industrial production in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. It is noteworthy that both Peoples, more or less explicitly, blame immigration for the decline of their relative superiority.

For who is the ‘We’ we keep referring to?  The People used to mean “a group which shared a cultural and linguistic common past, usually inhabiting a particular geography and interacting extensively, thus developing and sharing a particular set of values”. In the last few centuries, this ‘We’ most often revealed itself through nationalism and attempts to exercise cultural hegemony over minorities.

Initially, the hegemonic impulse seeks to convert as many People as possible and therefore expand this cultural ‘We’ to be as large as it could be. In the Age of Empires, strength was a pure numbers’ game: how many square miles, how many soldiers, how many gold mines and share of global GDP. In the Age of Media, it is no longer necessary to administer a country to dominate a population: it is much more efficient to co-opt the People into ‘willingly’ adopting the culture of the dominant ideology. 

In reaction, people discover that ‘We’ are not as similar as the Empire wishes us to be. The wave of decolonization revealed that People desire sovereignty over their own lives, laws and ways of living. The right to self-determine — stemming from the inner drive for embodying freedom — is deeply engrained, both at the individual level and in the collective imaginary. Thus, you get fights for independence like in Quebec. Those events, playing out through our political institutions and processes, show that ‘We’ may crystallize at a regional level, where the group can be more clearly defined. 

In the Age of Media, this process occurs more subtly. People realize that ‘We’ are not reflected in the dominant culture, that ‘we’ no longer (or never could be) recognized ourselves in the portrayed ideals. This realization creates a sense of alienation. But since ‘We’ can’t pinpoint exactly what is wrong, ‘We’ need to point to an ‘Other’ as the cause of our troubles. And while we’ve now defined ‘Us’ by locating who is ‘Them’, we’ve lost sight that the problem might not be about the People per se but about how the Media intermediates our relationships with each other. Or maybe it was the ideals, which were never professed by the whole People but merely represented its powerful elite.

Characteristics other than nationality can also form the basis of People’s identities. In the 19th century, Marx revealed how the workers became a ‘class’ which should oppose the bourgeoisie. In the 21st century, the Bankers (and Economists) have replaced the Aristocracy as the Elite, holding economic and political influence (in part) because they can articulate their interests more coherently than other groups in society. For the group — ‘We the People’ — necessarily needs a way to communicate. At first sight, it appears as if the group needs characteristics around which to coalesce. And indeed, any group needs to — eventually — articulate what they stand for or against. But it’s not like there is a committee somewhere holding meetings! Nowadays, no one ‘controls and commands’ how the group thinks of itself! What the group most needs is ongoing interactions such that ‘what matters’ can progressively emerge. 

Historically, these ‘identity’ groups were constructed through simple proximity and ongoing interactions. They were also built over generations. Now that our World is so small — through easy exchanges of People, goods and information — the ‘We’ is losing specificity in the local environment and yet has not fully emerged in the global cosmopolitan sense. ‘We’ have not yet pledged: “We the People of the Earth, in order to live in Harmony with our Environment…” 

For it seems a natural human tendency to ultimately want to define ourselves around a ‘We’. We want to belong to a group which intimately represents us. Within that group, ‘We’ want to be affirmed in the gaze of the Other, to know that we truly exist because we are seen, acknowledged, and recognized as an important member of a community with whom we share a common outlook on life.  We also want to learn from the group how we should behave, what is valuable. 

As I took the plane to join Peter and Mark at the Boston Airport, I felt a profound need to escape the vacuum of my self — of my condemnation to be free as Sartre puts it — and to find shelter in the comfort of the ‘We’. As part of a People — a group as small as 3 souls — I sought to express my uniqueness without the burden of having to stand alone. I expected my weekend with Peter and Mark to celebrate my belonging to this very select group: the writers of the Essence of Water! Which it did, yet also left me with a profound realization.

In most social interactions, ‘We’ intuitively assume that Other minds function similar to ours. By that, I mean that ‘We’ interpret Others as analogous to ourselves and approach them — implicitly or explicitly — seeking a reflection of how ‘we’ think. Historically, before air travel and mass-immigration, most local-ish groups shared a similar enough socialization and culture that ‘We’ could recognize our worldview in almost every Other we would meet in daily life. Indeed, the conceptual framework ‘we’ use to make sense of the world is learned intersubjectively — meaning that ‘whatever we believe about the world’ exists in multiple minds and is re-enforced by the acceptance of the group. The ‘existence’ of a worldview isn’t a physical reality that can be pointed at and studied. A worldview’s power is to be shared, ‘believed’ and hopefully considered unquestionable by as many ‘carrier minds’ as possible. 

This ‘We’ coalesce around an implicit yet widely shared understanding of how ‘we’ are to understand and interpret the world — aka a worldview. Thus, a ‘worldview’ is the core characteristic of a ‘People’. Commonalities of race, language and lifestyle are often embedded into the narrative of the worldview, often acting as ‘indicators’ or ‘signals’ that one shares a particular worldview. Like wearing a cross might (and historically did) mean belonging to the Catholic Church. Or a street gang member wearing ‘blue’ to express their hatred of the ‘red’. We often use external characteristics to differentiate between allies and Others. Yet ultimately, what we ‘screen for’ is a shared worldview. 

To diverge from the collective worldview has always carried the risk of exclusion from the group because the group selects its members according to mental ‘outlook’. Our conceptual scheme/framework is one of the most crucial components of our ‘identity’. ‘We’ want to see ourselves — exhibited as how we think — ‘affirmed’ in Others. Thus, we seek to surround ourselves with individuals who experience and think about the world in a fundamentally similar way. It is a ‘natural’ human behaviour in the sense that it brings us pleasure and comfort. As I recently read in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, rejection of the collective worldview — in its extreme form — can lead to insanity because to ‘dislocate’ from a conceptual worldview is to come to believe in concepts so fundamentally different that an individual can no longer be understood by Others. 

I’ve come to believe that our mental health is in part based on belonging to a group that shares our worldview. That basic approach to ‘reality’ need not be dogmatic. A worldview can be a belief, or a practice, or even an attitude. It need not be explicitly verbalized. But any conceptual scheme needs some fundamental tenets, such as ‘belief in the human dignity of all’ or ‘the existence (or non-existence) of a deity’ or a particular definition of ‘what the purpose of life might be’. I’ve come to realize that a worldview can be pretty much anything: it can be based on traditions, on reason, on intuition.  Moreover, its ‘success’ is measured only in its ability to reach the goals it posits as part of its guiding principles.  Ie. what is deemed important and ‘successful’ for a particular worldview are selected/promulgated as part of that worldview.  It’s a circular process.  And self-reenforcing insofar as it gains power the more widely it is shared.  

I’ve found, in my own life experience, that an individual can develop a unique approach to ‘what the world means’ to them. Their idiosyncratic worldview might even be more ‘successful’ in reaching its defined goals — its embedded telos. But living with an individual worldview is lonely. 

Identifying one’s values and worldview in Others actually reduces a kind of ‘existential anxiety’ because part of what ‘exists’ as a self is one’s conceptual worldview. In other words, ‘How I perceive myself and the world’ — because it is already a mental abstraction — comes into fuller existence when an Other can perceive it as well. When a worldview escapes the subjectivity of one mind and enters the intersubjective realm of many minds, it somehow becomes more ‘real’. For there is something inherently relational in how we come to understand ourselves and our beliefs. Thus, expressing and discussing our worldviews — the unique bits, the common and the over-lapping parts — helps us, not only to identify who the ‘we’ is and what ‘it/we’ think about the world, but makes us feel an engaged participant in that group. And remember, we long for the safety of the group.

I found our group to be different than any I’ve ever belonged to. First of all, the ‘We’ of Peter, Mark and I emerged around our individual commitment to reflect on the human condition amidst a noisy world. We write about philosophy so that we can think about philosophy. Through this process, ‘we’ question what a life well-lived is and suggest hypotheses as to how ‘we’ have embodied it in our own reality. It is self-interested insofar as we believe that an examined life — even partially or sporadically — is one lived with greater rewards and more profound pleasures. For example, since we must eat to sustain ourselves, why not be mindful of taste, texture and quality at every meal? Why not perfect the recipe for Madeleines? We live intentionally because the goal of life — if a universal goal exists or can ever be articulated — is definitely not to ‘fill the time’ between now and our death! 

Thus, the ‘We’ of Mark, Peter and I came together — at last! We cooked amazing food, soaked up the sun, (some of us) braved the sea but we all savoured oysters and lobsters. We started to get acquainted with each other — in real life. Unbeknownst to me, the raison d’etre of our group shifted below my feet. I wanted to know ‘Who are We?’ as a group — as the writers of the Essence of Water, committed to a mindful and reflective life — and to feel that I belong to that particular group !!! What I found was a few human beings, figuring out ‘Who are we for each other?’. 

Through dialogue, I tentatively explore those relationships. In our newly-formed mini-community, while we shared some common characteristics — all of us being privileged and highly educated — our sense of belonging stemmed mainly from our attitude toward life and not any outwardly identity-driven characteristics. Mainly, ‘we’ are all engaged in the process of intentional living. But clearly, the pursuit of a well-lived life can take many forms! For while we are still more or less engaged in the same questioning process, the answers we find are significantly different. No better or worse, just attuned to our personality and unique life circumstances. 

Our collective ‘vibe’ wasn’t about what we can ‘do’ for each other (or even collectively together) but on a commitment to merely ‘be’ in the presence of others. Huge difference! This was a unique experience because such encounters require a familiarity that usually emerges from physical or social proximity: from having similar lifestyles, a similar profession, a similar educational past or a set of cultural experiences. Mark and I — outside of reading each other’s texts — were newly met strangers! 

I had anticipated a celebration of a group, the formation of a ‘We’. Instead, our week-end became a subtle exploration of personal diversity. Whereas I had wanted to focus on our similarities, I found myself deeply different from my counterparts. 

It started immediately on the way back from the airport. Shortly after (or before) talking about Stephen Jay Gould (who I had never heard off), I confessed that I have not yet acquired my cynicism. According to Peter, who confirmed my statement, it’s quite unusual — especially compared to a Brit who lear their cynicism quite early in life. In the UK, cynicism “… is steeped in the tea!”. Mark indeed expressed astonishment. For his part, Peter shared a profound ambivalence, describing himself as a reluctantly accepting that cynicism indeed prevails in society today. 

By the word ‘cynicism’, I mean the worldview that people in society act selfishly, seek benefits for themselves (money, power) especially with the least amount of work possible (what economists call rent-seeking) and ultimately, with limited or nil regard to the consequences of their actions for others or the collective. Being a cynic implies that we approach Others with skepticism of their expressed intentions (especially altruistic ones). Those adopting this worldview morally justify it by the ‘fact’ that, since everyone else is deemed to do the same, any move “is part of the game!”, where ‘success’ is defined merely by the reaching of one’s goals. 

To me, this attitude is profound a ‘win-lose’ model where social status and even self-worth is defined ‘relative’ to Others on the social ladder. It’s not that I don’t understand that People act in self-interest. It’s simply that I do not view (or experience) the world through that lens. I can’t. I refuse to believe that it is ‘normal’ for human beings to be so individualistic, even though I can rationally see that it is the current social ‘norm’, especially in business and politics. 

But surprisingly, ‘cynicism’ is one of those words with a very rich history! In ancient Greece, the Cynics were those who rejected all conventions and instead advocated the pursuit of virtue in accordance with a simple and idealistic way of life. (Wiki, Cynicism) Well, that describes me quite accurately!!! Maybe I’m a practicing cynic — part of the resistance, showing an alternative way to live. There might be two sides to every concept after all!

Don’t get me wrong: I think that I understand Mark’s and Peter’s point-of-view — and I certainly don’t judge them for our diverging attitudes. Mark’s whole-hearted acceptance of cynicism — as the structuring modus operandi of how people behave in society — doesn’t imply that he unreflectively adopts this attitude in his own life. He still has choices, which I believe he executes quite willingly. He doesn’t need to adopt the prevailing worldview to share it cognitively. In fact, his awareness of Others’ self-serving tendencies might allow him to best anticipate their reactions, enabling him to fulfill his chosen goals — whatever those are. 

Peter struggles. I think that he’d want the worldview to be different because he understands that it could. But since it isn’t, maybe selfishness is in human nature after all. Yet since Peter can’t adopt (or more specifically, chooses not to be co-opted by) the prevailing attitude, he lives in constant dissonance. He cognitively understands Others, yet he himself behaves differently and is not understood by the Others he co-exists with. Obviously, ‘understand’ exists on a continuum and it is rarely all white or all black. We always find small islands of people with whom we can exchange meaning. But how small are such islands, and how fierce and impenetrable is the surrounding sea, will necessarily affect our feeling of belonging to the greater ‘we’.

For my part, I’m not sure to what degree I ‘understand’ the self-serving ethos, because I fundamentally disagree with its values and end-goal. I’ve taken a position — against — which means that I’m no longer cognitively flexible to switch at will between two fundamentally different cognitive schemes. I’ve refused the ‘play by the rules’ merely because these are the rules of the game. As a result, I’m playing a different game. While Peter confronts the prevailing worldview from within — and bravely stands differently on the well-established turf of the ‘self-serving People’ — I behave as if the world was already not cynical, as if People have embraced their universality as ‘One Humanity, One Earth’. This ‘fake-it-till you make it’ approach has disconnected me from the prevailing ‘social reality’; for I do not share the cynical intersubjective ‘understanding’ of how the world functions. Therefore, I’m an outsider to the prevailing worldview.

Again, it isn’t so black and white. From where I stand, at the margin of that big ‘world-melee’, I can comprehend intellectually what is going on. I see the trends, the news; I can stay informed. I just get emotionally all worked up! I’ve repeatedly tried and failed to belong to groups whose ideals I don’t believe in. In other words, I don’t wear the armour very well. I find it too constraining. Anyway, it’s been my life-journey that I end up exploding from within and destroying all that I’ve built on false premises. Hence I realized that I could fight against the current, getting exhausted trying to affect the tide, or simply ‘be’. In stepping aside, I’ve given myself space to live by an alternative understanding of ‘what reality is’. Yet, this has also caused me to be an alien to (and feel alienated from) Others. It’s a price I’ve been willing to pay, but it is still a toil. 

This is how I got to where I am today: searching for a ‘we’ to whom I belong. I’ve searched hard and for so long that I can’t help but send radar ‘pings’ into the noosphere. In flying to Boston, my hopes were high — probably unrealistically so. 

Over a lovely weekend, I made new friends and ate so well! Feeling awash in mutual acceptance and respect, I could be authentic, perceptively open. We talked about both serious and mundane topics. What I discovered was the depth of our diversity. For human diversity is not merely about where we grew up, our interactions with family and colleagues, our formative experiences, it’s also about our values and worldview. Since Mark, Peter and I share a commitment to intentional living (a guiding value), I expected they might share my worldview. I don’t think we do — though to verbalize how our attitudes and beliefs differ would require more ongoing interactions. 

We certainly did — cognitively and through empathy — build a bridge of understanding between our individuality, because we cared enough about each other to get to know each other as unique Others. But we didn’t merge into a ‘we’. ‘We’ didn’t even attempt to. We tried to ‘be’ — each as our own — ‘together’. This seems so simple, but it ain’t easy, for it requires being receptive to subtle differences and, even harder, a commitment to stop ‘projecting’ our worldview onto others. We are not analogous, and yet our differences need not be threatening. And we achieved a sense of collective peace with our sense of diversity because we were able to communicate. Moreover, maybe the result more communication would actually result in a narrowing of the differences between our worldviews, not to an identical dogma but to a set of shared values.  

This weekend left me seriously wondering: who is this ‘we’ to which we aspire to belong? In the ‘self-serving’/cynical worldview, there is an embedded ‘we’. For even though the worldview is extremely individualistic, it still assumes that everyone else behaves accordingly to it. Therefore, it is somewhat stable. Life gets messier when ‘we’ realize that it is false! Some altruistic individuals are really altruistic, acting either unselfishly or seeking a synergy between their own goals and that of the community. There are alternatives. One is not morally justified to jump off a bridge just because everybody else does it. 

We are at a point in our cognitive evolution where we — humanity as a whole and possibly each individual personally — either analytically or intuitively know that ‘we’ no longer share a common worldview. We can’t deny the evidence coming from all around the globe! We live according to different values, different paradigms, and they constantly clash. In the intimacy of our inner self, ‘we’ are confronted by this absence of ‘we’ yet still long to congregate, to belong. The more anxious we get about not knowing who the ‘we’ is anymore, the more we seek the safety of the tribe — even an illusory one. 

With the degree of freedom we have today, with the countless opportunities we have for being, experiencing, and holding beliefs according to our own ideals, ‘we’ are losing touch with that equally important need: to belong to the intersubjective ‘social reality’. The more unique each of us gets, the fewer characteristics we share by default, the more we need to communicate in order to understand each other. FYI: This trend is accelerating.

==> Here I mean genuinely communicate: through ongoing interactions based on a receptive and non-interfering attitude — not just shouting louder at each other in the hope that forcefulness will prevail. 

I don’t know where this leads, but I’m investigating. For it seems clear to me that ‘we’ need a sense of who the ‘we’ is before we can collectively achieve anything. 

When I was a teenager, one day during a history lesson my teacher quoted Lord Acton, the nineteenth century British historian: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  I was of an impressionable age and this was exactly the sort of epigram that appealed to me: short and poetic in form, but deep and insightful in meaning.   I made a mental note to remember and apply it in my thinking.  For someone disposed to play the intellectual rebel – as I was then and am now – the quotation has much to offer, since the authority figures who disapproved of my free-thinking could now be dismissed by me not just as reactionaries, but as corrupt reactionaries.  Fathers, teachers, ministers of religion: all are men of power and, drawing on Acton’s sharp observation, it was easy for me to assert that to the degree that they were powerful they were also corrupt.

A year or so later, I saw a paperback copy of Acton’s essays in a second-hand bookshop, which I bought (obviously: the habits of a lifetime, by definition, start when we are young), brought home, and then started to read.  I was surprised, indeed disturbed to discover that I had been seriously misled by my teacher.  What Acton had written – in a letter, as it happens, the text of which was included in the book of essays – was this: power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  He had qualified the abrupt and striking claim in the first half of his sentence by two words that significantly changed its meaning.  Not power corrupts but power tends to corrupt.

A tendency is not an inevitability; the universal cannot be presumed but requires reference to the particularity. In future, before dismissing the utterances of the powerful as the voice of corruption, I would have to assemble some actual evidence for such a claim: it might tend to be true in general but was it also true in this specific case?  Knowledge, I had discovered, is not the same as pithiness.  A good lesson to learn young, for sure, but one that is not always ready at hand, not always the mind’s preferred approach, because the world is easier to deal with when it can be described in simple terms, using straightforward intellectual constructions that can be applied – lazily, if we are being honest – to any and every example that comes to mind.

We are readily disposed to make use of general categories into which we can gather all cases.  It is instinctive; perhaps an instinct cultivated by our determination to survive.  In a recent conversation, driving north from Boston (MA) to Scarborough (ME), Peter mentioned Stephen Jay Gould, the famous Harvard palaeontologist, who wrote many popular books about evolutionary biology.  I once heard him give a public lecture in London (UK) on the question, Is there such a thing as human nature?  His answer: the human brain has evolved to deal well with type-type recognition (“she ate red berries and was buried; these berries are red so I better not eat them”) but deals poorly with statistical analysis (“of the twenty types of red berry in our local habitat, only one is poisonous to humans; so most red berries, including this one, are unlikely to harm me”).  Thus, he concluded, while it is not clear that there is such a thing as human nature, it is clear why humans are predisposed to think that there is: we tend to think in types.

Whether or not we have an evolutionarily acquired disposition to classify everything and everyone into groups, at the very least it seems clear that in our speech we are prone to adopt the short-form unqualified generalization.  In part, this is because the rhetorical force of brief, bold statements is much greater than longer, subtle ones.  Slogans are better able to mobilise minds, both for the personal and the political.  Benjamin Franklin – also of Boston (MA) –  was adept at crafting pithy sayings, which are easily remembered because they pay no account of the occasions on which they don’t apply:  an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest sounds so much better than an investment in knowledge of certain kinds, will likely provide a better return than many other forms of spending, but not in all cases and not over all time periods, despite the fact that the latter is true and the former is not. Likewise, the claim that the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it could be made much more accurate through further elaboration but would almost certainly lose its appeal and become less memorable in the clarifying process.

I am tempted to say, “always avoid unqualified generalizations”, except that this warning is itself an unqualified generalization, and thus to be avoided.  Instead, I recommend acknowledgment that, “carefully qualified statements about specific cases are more likely to be true (and, therefore, more likely to be helpful) than unqualified statements about general cases; although this is not always the case, because every general rule has important exceptions, thus demonstrating that rules are mostly derived from statistical norms rather than universal truths, except in those very rare cases when they are universally true”.   I hope that is clear.

To summarise, as pithily as I am able: error tends to brevity, but accuracy tends to prolixity. But please note well, as Acton did, the important qualifying role of tendency.

My recent visit to the US provided two illustrations of this point.   What might the weather be like in New York City during the fourth week in September?  Nowadays that’s an easy question to answer, since the Internet is awash with meteorological data.  A brief search provided me not only with the average temperatures, both highs and lows, plus daily rainfall (all very useful information) but also data on the range of cases that might be encountered.  In other words, not just the mean for heat and precipitation, but also how far the extremes in both directions might stray from that mean.  I could therefore predict not just what was likely but what was possible.  All very interesting as a summary of general weather history for the city, but for me, visiting specifically during the fourth week of September in the year 2019, and wondering what to pack – should I bring sun-glasses and sun-cream, or a raincoat and a hat? – the more pertinent question was, What will the weather be like in NYC next week?  That the mean temperature ranges between 16 and 25 Celsius is interesting, but not what I most cared about, for which I needed an accurate weather forecast, rather than rich data on historical averages.  (As it happens, the city enjoyed higher than average temperatures, closer to 30 than 25 most days that week.)

En route to New York, as Peter drove us from Scarborough (ME) to Boston (MA) to catch the Amtrak train to Penn Station (NY), we talked about our time working together at the investment management subsidiary of a global financial firm, back at the start of this century.  It was a pleasure to reminisce.  Later that day, staring out of the train window at the New England countryside, I thought about my last couple of years of employment there, when I was asked by the CEO to set up and then chair a Diversity Committee for the European office.  As part of this process, I interviewed the (mostly male) members of the Senior Management Team, to solicit their thoughts about the current state of diversity within the firm (very simply: dire) and what should be done about it (very disappointingly: not much).

I remember well a conversation with one senior manager, who told me, with no hint of embarrassment, that the reason why there were no women in his investment team (to be clear, none at all: not just fewer than 50%, but actually 0%) was because to be in his team required a high level of competence in mathematics and – alas! – women were just not as good at maths as men.  This from a Managing Director of a firm which insisted that all its investment strategies should be thoroughly evidenced by data and implemented with care, to achieve good performance and avoid the concentration of risk.  In other words, his team only bought assets for our clients after they had taken account – at great expense of research time – of the detailed characteristics of each asset, its likely performance and how it would help to diversity the existing portfolio.  When we hired staff for our business, however, the firm paid almost no attention to well-documented evidence of skill acquisition and learning potential, relying instead on the intuitive judgments (also known as the prejudices) of the senior managers.  Rather than ensuring that new hires brought diversity to the existing team, as a matter of deliberate choice we concentrated our risk by repeatedly hiring in our own image.

This story is neither unusual nor surprising: it reflects how the finance industry was, and in many cases still is.  For all its sense of being at the cusp of innovation and change, it remains – mostly – a place of conservatism and embedded privilege.  As Stephen Jay Gould explained, we tend to think in particular ways, because as a species we have evolved to give precedence to type-type recognition ahead of a rigorous statistical examination of the data.  We tend to think in ways that proved very successful at an earlier stage of our evolution, but which might not be so helpful for our next survival challenge; and we find it hard to abandon what worked well last time around.  However easy this is to understand, it is impossible to excuse.  Sloppy thinking is sloppy, irrespective of its evolutionary pedigree.  And not just sloppy, but also dangerous, wrong and unjust.  Knowing the average tells us nothing about the individual.  The mean is not the best.

We need to remind ourselves regularly that many red berries are edible and that some are delicious; we need to acknowledge that some women are not just good at mathematics, but better than most men; and, based on recent experience, I can assure my readers that sometimes the last week in September is the perfect time to visit NYC, when the sky is bright blue and the sun is warm, and Manhattan becomes – as Ella sang – an isle of joy.