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.

Work and life and work and life and...

Should we 'live to work' or 'work to live'? A key question of our age. And the root of much of my personal existential anxieties.



Modern thinking seems to be dominated by two conflicting conceptions of 'work' and the role it should play in our lives.

The first idea is that our work and personal lives are two separate domains. They are ruled by separate concerns, needs and motivations. We should aim for a 'work/life balance' but we shouldn't 'bring our work home' or 'mix business with pleasure'. In effect, we're actually two different people depending on whether we're at work or at home.

The best account I read of this was by Michael Foley in his book The Age of Absurdity. I don't have the book handy but the impression it left is that we somehow put our more sincere feelings on hold when we step into the office. The workplace has its own set of (absurd and unwritten) rules and constraints. At its heart is the need to maintain a shallow cheeriness, a veneer of self/group-enforced 'workaday' pleasantries that makes the whole enterprise work-able (excuse the pun). To try to reveal one's true feelings in this setting would be nigh on impossible and almost definitely counter-productive.

Its an idea that I can definitely relate to. I suspect most others can too.

The second line of thinking is that we should essentially be living our work. Our work should be our reason to be and should be motivated by the same values that drive us in our private lives. It's an idea that has become increasingly influential as technology has made us contactable any where, any place, any time, allowing work to seep into previously private corners of our lives. It appeals to idealists (and freelance social media 'gurus') because it holds out the promise to end drudgery and unite our lives. After all, 'If you choose a job you love, then you'll never have to work a day in your life'.

A difficult concept to argue with. But in my experience one that's even harder to put into practice. There just aren't enough good jobs to go around. For every fashion designer, doctor or astronaut, there are countless shelf stackers, call centre workers or office drones. But there's an even more fundamental tension at work.

Most jobs are not driven by the things that really motivate us - feeling loved, being a useful part of society, having purpose, getting better at stuff, fulfilling our potential. They may tangentially satisfy some of these needs but all as secondary to the real business - 'efficiency' for the purposes of making money.

So perhaps the problem isn't work itself but the kind of work we do at most jobs?

Killing Time At Home

Still not sure what this film is trying to say but it gets me every time. Video and audio are both amazing but it's the story that does it. So much emotion packed into less than 3 minutes of animation...



Apparently it's been used in English lessons in schools across the UK. Amen to whoever decided to include this on the syllabus!

Facing up to the customer

One of the things that market researchers do is help people at the companies they work for meet with their customers. I wonder if this isn't in fact one of the most important things that researchers do? Could it be the basis of a kind of research that add real 'thick' value?

I'm reading a book called Made to Stick about how different messages can be made more effective or 'sticky'. One element that they identify as being important is that a message is 'concrete' - rooted in real stuff and not abstract concepts.

An idea that is truly concrete has 'hooks'. Like velcro, it is able to catch onto pre-existing 'hoops' in our mind, stuff that we already know about and can relate to.

One story they tell is of a new brand manager at an American food corporation. When she started in the role she was given a folder of reports and statistics on her supposed customer all of which left her feeling none the wiser about they were actually like. Then her company arranged for her to actually spend a few days in the homes of some of the people who actually bought and used her product. That experience was so real that it led her to several insights about how to improve the brand offer and still informs how she thinks about her customer.

It's amazing how distant many people that work in big companies are from the customer they're trying to reach. Given this it's perhaps unsurprising that just a few days spent face-to-face - immersed in people's real lives, observing how they actually use the product, hearing their views directly - could form a more useful and lasting impression than any amount of second hand reports or statistics.

What's perhaps even more impactful about this approach though is that it humanises the customer, changing them from a statistic to a real life person and helping to build empathy. A company of employees who have looked into the eyes of the people they are selling to, encountered them in their own home, witnessed them playing with their children, is a company that is less likely to take cynical decisions.

In other words, meeting the customer shouldn't just about developing strategy. It's should be about creating human connections and situating what a customer does in a more social - and more empathic - setting.

Branded hypocrisy

So if hypocrisy can be good on a personal level could it also be true for businesses and brands?

I've done a lot of work in the past with one of the major mobile phone manufacturers. This company has one of the CSR records in the business, way above its peers in terms of both environmental and social behaviour. I know that this was driven by authentic beliefs in the boardroom, a real desire to do their bit.

Now talking about ethical initiatives alone is't going to sell. People are on the whole just not that interested. But a lot of these 'ethical' initatives were also very innovative - in terms of say new materials or new ways of using the mobile - and could easily have fed into wider technological credentials. They felt right for the brand and would have made sense out in the open.

By now you may or may not have guessed that I'm talking about Nokia. But even if you did guess then I bet it was just based on a vague feeling and nothing concrete.

Because Nokia never made anything of these virtues. They were afraid of being called hypocrites. They knew that whatever they said, there woud still be some people who would find fault with them for being part of an industry built on a business model that encourages people to replace their handset every year.

Just like on a personal level, businesses are never going to be perfect. As we come to recognise that we're pushing the planet to its ecological limits, the very idea of consumer capitalism seems shaky. Businesses are part of this old model. But still some are doing it better than others.

Companies that are doing things better should be shouting about it. It takes guts to stick your head above the parapet but it's about starting a conversation around the impact of your industry and showing what you're doing to improve things.

The playing field is shifting and brands who have a head start can lead the conversation and help shift it further, giving competitors an increasingly tough time to keep up. Smart brands are realising that this way the future lies, Nike being one example of a company that's beginning to do this quite well (see http://www.nikebetterworld.com/ for an example).

Nokia had a chance to do this some years ago and unfortunately passed it up. Maybe it was just too early then. Maybe they bottled it. Whatever the case, they probably still have the credentials to make something of their values.

Some might say it's too late. After all, 'values' are no substitute for a lack of exciting products. If Nokia want to stand for more than just the 'original mobile phone' and a new deal with MS then they need to give their staff and customers something to believe in. Talking about their values and what they're doing about them could help galvanise the company, whilst at the same time putting pressure on competitors.

More than that though, if Nokia really want to follow through on their beliefs, then talking about how they're trying to solve the problems in their industry is surely the right thing to do. Even if it does make them a bit of a hypocrite.

Is hypocrisy better than the alternative?

Is being a hypocrite always such a bad thing? Or could it sometimes be better than the alternative?

I reckon that being a hypocrite has got a petty bad press. The notion that we might think and do conflicting things has been given pretty short shrift. It's been taken as a demonstration of 'falseness' - a cardinal sin when you believe in the idea of a single united self. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a hypocrite.

In a recent interview with Jonathan Safran Foer - the author of Eating Animals - he makes this point in relation to vegetarianism.

The food industry is the single biggest contributor of climate change gases, bigger even than transport. The head of the IPCC -Rajendra Pachauri - has recommended cutting back on meat intakeas the one action that everybody could take to personally mitigate their own contribution. Not to mention the inhumane conditions in which most animals are kept in order to keep costs down. This at a time when we are starting to appreciate that animals aren't the 'soul-less automatons' that we have for so long assumed them to be.

The more you know about the story behind how our meat is produced and the consequences of it, the harder it becomes to justify eating so much of it. Eating meat is increasingly a moral choice.

That puts a lot of people - me included - in a difficult situation. We like eating meat. We've been doing it pretty much guilt free for years. Everybody else eats meat. And now we're being told the rules are changing?!

It can feel like we're left with two choices. Stop eating meat entirely. Or continue as we always have done.

There is of course a third choice - to cut back on meat - but this involves thinking of ourselves as hypocrites. We need to agree that eating meat is no longer really something we should be doing but continue doing it anyway for our own pleasure.

I agree with Foer here, that this is not something that we generally like to do. It involves an acknowledgment that we're not living up to our own standards. We would rather bury our head in the sands and carry on as normal. Or make up all kind of justifications about why we can't do it. We're too busy. We don't like vegetarian food. Meat is just too damn tasty.

So I for one am now proud to be a hypocrite on this issue. Each time I eat meat, on some level I feel like I'm making a bad choice. With that acknowledged, perhaps it'll help my behaviour to catch up with my conscience.

Because it's true what they say... nobody likes to think of themselves as a hypocrite.

A Scenic World shared by people who've never met

A brilliant fan made video to Beirut's Scenic World...



And read the comments below for a touching reminder of how social media can create touching little encounters and provoke real feelings... between strangers

Warning: Thanks to Sony Music Entertainment you will not want to watch this video

I've recently been watching the 3rd series of a comedy called How Not to Live Your Life on YouTube. If you haven't already seen it then do, if only for the final episode of the series in which there's an amateur dramatics production of Top Gun: the Musical.

Oh and it also guest stars Noel Fielding from the Mighty Boosh and contains references to Penge. What's not to like?

Here's a little sample...



Yes that's right. The video has no audio. Thanks to Sony Music Entertainment (Don't worry though, you can watch pretty much all of the rest of it here)

I actually managed to watch the video somewhere else and in one of the party scenes Rock the Casbah by The Clash plays in the background. The Clash happen to be signed to Sony Music. Bye bye sound.

The last time I came across this was when I was watching the BBC4 documentary Krautrock, a brilliant and engrossing as much about the rebirth of German culture after WWII as the amazing characters behind Kraftwerk, Can and Neu amongst other bands. But be warned. Sony, in their wisdom, have requested the removal of the sound from the final part of the film because it contains a snippet of a David Bowie song.

So having already invested 50 mintes of my time I was left feeling seriously let down.

This kind of behaviour by Sony is so counter-productive it makes me want to go and download the entire Clash back catalogue just on principle (I don't need to because I pay a monthly subscription to Spotify).

The most stupefying thing is that Sony are actually paying someone to police videos on YouTube and piss off potential customers. It's like they're intent on running their business into the ground rather than adapt a new media landscape.

I've actually met people who work for Sony who recognise that there's no real future for the music industry if they keep on acting on tired old notions of ownership. But unless the people at the top get that too, they'll lose out to newer rivals who get that the rules have change about what constitutes value in the music industry.

More than science & mumbo jumbo

It's easy to see why some of the reviews of The Power of Now dismiss it as 'mumbo jumbo'.

A few years back I read a book with the same name that influenced me a fair bit. It was basically an argument in favour of sound reasoning, a rebuke to charlatans and snake oil salesmen and those who sign up to their theories. I remember that Carol Caplan - and her influence on the Blairs - and homeopathy came up quite a lot.

The bottom line was that we should put all our faith in reasoning and science.

At university some of my anthropology lecturers used to talk about science as just another way of looking at the world. I thought they were mad.

Science is about what's true and what's not. The evidence is all around us. It's created TV and cars. it's put a man on the moon. Gravity is a universal constant, right?!

I now see that I was missing the point. It was never about science being wrong. It was about what science ruled in and out as valid forms of knowledge.

The world seen through a scientific lens tends towards a rationalist and materialist viewpoint. It values certainty what can be proved. It is outward looking. It creates a division between us and the world.

What it has tended to ignore is our own subjective experience of the world. After all, our basic experience of life can't be examined by others or subjected to experiments. It can't be proved or objectified.

Yet it is the most basic element of our experience.

We live with it everyday. It is the lens through which we see and understand the world. It frames our understanding of everything. And we have been paying it barely any attention.

I have a confession to make. I never actually finished Eckhart's book. I never will.

His call to try to re-engage with ourselves, with our basic experience of consciousness is refreshing. It talks about a kind of knowledge that is often neglected. It's message - to try to re-engage with our own bodies, feel more and think less - is more relevant than ever in today's hectic, always-on world.

The problem with the book is that this is not something that you can read about. It's not something you can easily rationalise.

It's something you have to put into practice.

Thoughts vs Feeling

In the questions following a talk by Martha Nassbaum at the RSA, one audience member mentions The Power of Now By Eckhart Tolle.

Her question relates to how Martha Nassbaum's views - on the value of a participatory and didactic approach to arguing against injustice - and Eckhart's views - that we should be essentially be trying to think less in order to really feel life - could be reconciled.

Martha Nassbaum, having not read the book, is not really in a position to answer. And to be fair, the question was not all that clear, even to someone who has read the book.

Even so, her response is interesting. From the brief description of 'looking inwards' she sees Eckhart's view to be narcissistic and at risk of encouraging less empathy.

Having read the book, I would say that this is exactly not what it is about. The questioner describes it as a 'quirky little book' and that it certainly is. Some of the statements in it would certainly jar with anybody approaching it from a scientific point of view. At it's core though is a call to re-connect with some of the teachings that have inspired Eastern and perhaps also, though now much more obscured, Western spirituality.

Whilst Eckhart does advise keeping part of our energy always focussed inwards on our body, it is too blunt to equate this with narcissism. What he is trying to instill in the reader is contact with something deeper, something that transcends thoughts about the 'self'. At the core of his philosophy is a cultivation of an awareness of out feelings, our very experience of reality. According to him, it is only through the awareness that we can hope to transcend our ego, which is made up of thoughts, and empathise with others.

The exchange struck a chord with me because I also couldn't help feeling distant from some of what Nassbaum was saying. Her obviously humanist views and sense of injustice are difficult to argue with but her academic, intellectual approach felt somehow old-fashioned. As if presenting a rational argument to somebody is going to change their mind. Recent research seems to suggest that it can do quite the opposite, retrenching people into their previously held view. People are often just not convinced by 'reasonable' argument. Just look at the arguments between left and right in America.

If we want a world in which people treat each other better then thinking and debating our differences might help take us some of the way.

True empathy though has feeling at his root. Although Eckhart's philosophy may involve spending time looking inwards, it is ultimately about switching off our thoughts to cultivate human feeling and, with it, the empathy that arises from a realisation of the shared human condition.

Image - Thoughts and Feelings by Jose Alberto Gomes Pereira

Getting your life together

Is the problem for people today not that life seems to have too little meaning but rather too much?

This is a point I heard raised recently by Dr Jonathan Rowson of the RSA's Social Brain Project on one of their podcasts.

What I think he meant is that the real challenge for people today, especially young people growing up, is finding an inner sense of unity. We live in an increasingly complex and fractured world, in which old certainties of who we are and our place in society have all but disappeared.

We are expected to form our own identities, to be whoever we want to be. Yet with so many competing demands, it's not clear exactly what that identity should be.

We feel like we should be all kind of people - the breadwinner, the friend, the family (wo)man, the socially aware, the creative, the man or woman. As each of these roles is increasingly defined, the expectations we place on ourselves increases. We are pulled in different directions at once. No wonder we have a sense of multiple selves.

The big challenge for our times then is maybe not to find meaning to our lives but to find one meaning that can run across these different aspects of our lives.

Gives the phrase 'get your life together' a whole new light.

Market Research: The 'handmaiden' of corporatism?

I want to explore how market research can create the kind of 'thick' value that Umair Haque talked about in his The New Capitalist Manifesto.

Can market research create the kind of value that genuinely - in the long run - contributes towards creating a better shared prosperity?

It's an important question for me personally and not that one that I plan to answer in one post. It's something I want to think about and explore.

It's a thought that I want to one day put into action.

As a starting point, I'm reminded of one of the first essays that I had to write for my university degree. The title of the essay was something like Was anthropology the handmaiden of colonialism?

The implication of the title was that, whilst the early anthropologists were often motivated by genuine intellectual curiosity and even a desire to understand and thus humanise their 'subjects', their findings were ultimately put to use by colonial overlords to subjugate and control those same 'subjects'.

I feel that the same is true of market research. My motivations for getting involved in the industry was an interest in people and what makes us tick. Any commercial aspect was secondary. I wasn't thinking about trying to sell stuff.

I doubt I'm alone. I've met many other like me. The market researchers in Century of the Self seemed similar. Many planners are the same.

But regardless of what motivates us, market research, or advertising, are not intellectual exercises. They are commercial operations. What we discover about people is ultimately put to use in an attempt to influence people to consumer more. We now know that that kind of lifestyle is unsustainable. It isn't in society's long-term interests. It arguably plays on their base motivations without making any attempt to cultivate a vision of 'the good life'.

The trouble with market research is that - in the end - we have no say over how our findings are used. We don't ultimately own our own thinking. So does this mean that market research will always be at the mercy of the client's intention?

Is the only way for market research to add real value to work with the right clients?