Capitalism Will Eat Itself

Before I started working in Japan, I made a pledge to continue writing this blog. It's been a long time since I last posted, but I'm back.

Work has been taking up a lot of my time and energy and whilst I have been finding my new job quite satisfying in some respects, I haven't forgotten the thoughts that drove me to first create this blog.

Now that the novelty of a new role has begun to wear off, I've been thinking more about the future, for the industry and for myself.

Then I came across this perfect illustration of the marketing will eat itself principle in Management Today, the perfect cue for me to start posting again:

Consider: three years after the Great Crash there is still no recovery in sight. Indeed, savage cuts administered by 'advanced' economies to slash deficits incurred to save the banks are bringing citizens onto the streets. The euro is in crisis. The increasing incidence and severity of financial crashes, lurid accounts of corporate wrongdoing, unsustainable inequalities, increasingly volatile commodity prices and the plunging reputation of business all point in one direction. US-style capitalism, sums up Roger Martin, dean of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and author of Fixing the Game, a forceful critique of today's state of play, is in danger of rotting out its moral core and destroying itself from within.

Empathy - Entropy

Is society making progress?

The research project I carried out into ethical consumerism was in many ways pretty depressing. But a comment made in one of the groups stayed with me and painted a more positive picture.

The belief expressed by this guy - and shared by the rest of the group - was that if you look at history, then things are getting better. Compared to the olden days people treat each other with more respect, they empathise more with each others plights, they're more tolerant of differences. Technological progress has been accompanied by moral progress.

This seems largely true. And I think on some level most people believe in it. It's the 'arc of progress' that underlies much of the modern project. We are slowly but surely making things better.

In The Empathic Civilisation, Jeremy Rifkin takes a look at the history of (mainly Western) society through this len and finds that indeed, it seems we have become more empathic towards each other. Technology has actually allowed a reorganisation of our social lives, helping to enable a greater sense of ourselves as individuals and as a consequence better able to empathise with other similar individuals. He identifies several periods in the past where there have been 'empathic surges' based on technological innovation, from the Babylonian introduction of agriculture to the industrial revolution.

However, progress is not without a cost. Rifkin also shows how the progress that has been made has relied on using scarce resources. So that the same innovations that allowed more efficient farming eventually ruined the very land it was initially able to make more fertile by reducing its mineral content and flooding it with salt. The heavy reliance on wood during the late middle ages that allowed a flourishing of life - and of greater empathy - eventually led to a depletion of the resource on which so much life was based. The systems that we rely on for the energy that has allowed us to flourish are finite and tend towards entropy.

We are now of course facing the biggest entropy bill of all, having in the last 150 years used up so much of the energy stored in the earth over the course of millions of years, possibly seriously destabilising its climate in the process. As the earth's resources dwindle, we face a rapidly growing population, all wanting to achieve the living standards that they have seen people in the West enjoying for the last 50 years.

So whilst I sympathise with the idea that we're making progress - and even that I question because whilst empathy may be getting 'wider', it's also arguably getting 'thinner' - the bigger question is if we have much time left to make the progress that it seems we could be capable of?

Photo by Chris Berle - http://www.chriseberle.net/

Smart Casual: Work encroaching into life

I had a conversation with my classmate today about 'smart casual'

To her it was the perfect style. She could go to work, then go out after work and feel dressed appropriately for each occasion.

Fair enough. A perfectly respectable and understandably pragmatic view.

Not my view though.

Whenever I'm not at work I like to dress casually. When I'm at work, I'm happy to dress smartly and put on a suit if needs be.
Anything in between feels like an unhappy halfway house.

My classmate asked me if I really wanted to keep my 'work' and my 'life' separate?

The trouble is for me that 'smart casual' feels like work values encroaching onto my personal life rather than the other way around. I want a more happy marriage between my 'work' and 'life'. But for me, that means doing work in clothes that I like to wear.

Maybe it really all comes down to a question of style and associations. After all, smart casual suits my classmate and for my friend I'm guessing it represented sophistication and to a certain extent glamour. For women in general, there seems to be a lot more flexibility, a lot more choice and a lot more expression when it comes to dressing for the office.

For me though, the whole idea smacks of corporate values and 'business as usual. Its the illusion of wearing what you want at work. Its work trying to make itself appear more friendly and relaxed and personal when in reality its no such thing. Its work trying to pretend that its no different from your private life. Its work trying to make its values the center of your life. And it requires the purchase of a whole new wardrobe for the privilege.

To be continued...

So it looks like I am going to be starting a new job soon. In Market Research. That will no doubt stoke up all the old existential fears. And leave me feeling rather less than satisfied again.

On the other hand, it will pay the bills. I plan to approach it like Sisphyius and take what I can from the experience. It will no doubt be temporary.

In entering into this necessary but compromising bargain I want to make one commitment to myself. Although I will no doubt have much less time on my hands, I want to keep this blog going. Even if it is just the occasional short ill thought out rant. This is my release valve and also a stimulus for my thinking. It represents the hope that there is a better way of doing things. It may one day get me there.

I have been asking myself whether I should make this blog public. In favour of the idea has been the (probably rather naive) hope that it could help me find the kind of job that I would be happy doing. Maybe one day that will still be the case.

What was holding me back was the perhaps more realistic notion that what I value in my personal life and what I should be perceived to value at work are not quite the same thing. And that I would be best off holding a piece of myself back. And that I don't want to have compromise what I write here.

Now that I'm about to start working again I'm glad that this is the path I've taken. Now whatever happens here, I will always have a place here to reflect on how I really feel...

Sisphyius and learning to love absurdity

In thinking about the distinction between 'work' and the stuff that we do at most 'jobs' I keep thinking back to an image left with me by Michael Foley's Age of Absurdity.

Even those not familiar with the name Sysphius probably know his story. A Greek king punished by the Gods to roll a huge stone up a hill each day for the rest of his life.

In many ways life is much like this. It's absurd. Trying to find real a depth of meaning is a recipe for frustration. But its all we have. And its through developing an appreciation of the process that we can find some satisfaction.

Life may be like rolling a huge stone uphill each day. But if we truly feel each contour of the rock, feel each sinew of our muscle, truly throw ourselves into this pointless task, then we might just get something out of the experience.

If I ever get a tattoo, then this will be it. But for now, I think I'd be well advised take a leaf out of Sysphius's book, stop tying my self up in knots about the futility of it all and try to get as much as I can out of a job well done.

Maybe ranting about work and life will one day get me somewhere?

Given the jobs I've had perhaps I shouldn't be complaining about work. All things considered, I've been pretty lucky. I've worked with good people, with genuine interest in their work. It's been intellectually involving, with lots of variation. Its given me the chance to use my brain and meet interesting people.

But still there's still been something gnawing at me. I've been unable to shake the sensation that it all could be done so much better. That I'm unquestionably participating in a system that is wrong at its core.

Maybe I'm caring too much. Maybe I'm doing too little. I definitely think I'd be better off if I just got on with it. But I can't get rid of this feeling.

The ironic thing is that I feel more ready than ever to apply myself to the hard work of something, yet I'm finding it harder than ever to find paid work that I actually feel is worth doing.

Maybe the conflict is to do with my particular industry. I've written before about how market research is essentially at the whim of it's clients. It can do very little to influence events. It can't lead by example.

But even more than that, there seems to be little room for moral conscience when there is potential business at stake. If someone is willing to pay for a market research to research something, then I can't imagine them turning the work down.

So where does this leave me?

I see two options. The first is to look for work with in a different industry. With the kind of company that a market research firm would usually work for. With the kind of company that actually has the power to do things differently. And the values to actually accomplish this.

The second is to create a new kind of research firm. One that takes a stand and only work with partners that it believes in. That plays a more active role in representing and empowering the consumer. That takes some lessons from anthropology and aims to break down the barrier between the 'subject' and the 'owner' of research.

At the moment I've got to admit that this sounds like a hopeless pipe dream. But could it be that this approach, one that tries to help create real value, that sees value in the interests of a wider range of actors that just its immediate client, that has a more long-term view, could also be good for business?

Probably not! Put like this its difficult to imagine anybody paying for this kind of service. But I can't help feeling that there's something to the idea. So for now I plan to doggedly pursue it just in case...

Creep at work

In four and a half minutes this video gets pretty close to encapsulating all of my current existential fears about work. Brilliant.