Black Swan

In management and organization, like everywhere else, one encounters optimism and pessimism. The extreme pole on the optimistic side includes beliefs about the opportunity for personal development that is provided by professional work, about the thrill of perfect cooperation and about empowerment and democracy in organizations.

The extreme pole on the pessimistic side has a very cynical character. There prevails the idea that in organizations it is only about power and money and that a hypocritical facade of sweet talk and so-called people-oriented Human Resource Management is dressed up in front of it.

Of course between these two poles there are innumerable positions where optimism and pessimism are mixed with each other. Depending on what a person experiences in his work, the position he occupies in the spectre can change over time and even per day. Pessimism can turn into optimism and vice versa.

Now, what I think is that the shift from optimism to pessimism is more obvious than the reverse. Because it’s nice to start a job with a positive attitude and usually one starts that way. And then only a few bad experiences need to follow for expectations to dampen or to be turned into the negative. That’s the way one becomes ‘wiser’. The claim propagated by many managers that with them everything is all right can at some point fairly easily be pierced.

The other – that is: the pessimistic – claim is much harder to pierce. Perhaps because it pretends to be wiser, because it is based on life experience. And none of us wants pass for naive. Hence the popularity of the idea that everyone eventually is just bent on personal gain, that the struggle for life is the only constant in organizations, and that there is no escape from that awareness, unless you are willfully blind. This cynicism is much harder to fight, because it claims truth. It can not be easily adjusted in the positive direction.

This paradigm tends to reinforce itself because every incident where there is selfish action fits in. Different things are simply not perceived. Here happens what Popper calls verification: if the hypothesis for research reads “There are only white swans”, and you examine that by collecting evidence in favour of the hypothesis, you will find white swans indeed. Applied to our subject: if the proposition is “In organizations the law of the jungle is dominant”, and you're going to confirm that claim by seeking supporting evidence then you will indeed find proof of the dreariness of organizations.

But Popper says: that research method is not right, because by searching confirmation of the proposition you will find it, that is to say white swans and dreariness. Instead, you should look for what contradicts that proposition, thus a black swan. Because if you then don’t find anything, the proposition gains value.

The proposition of the white swans for most people has already been irreparably refuted by their perceiving a black swan. The statement “In organizations the law of the jungle is dominant” may, however, seem irrefutable as an iron regularity, if only because the dreariness prevents you from seeing anything else. Moreover, you run the risk of a reputation of unworldliness if you bring in something to the argument in.

Yet that proposition is, viewed from a Popperian scientific perspective, as weak as that of the white swans, because the right-of-the-fittest proposition has its black swans. If, inspired by the work of Levinas, you approach people in organizations asking if they ever feel ashamed about their organizational power they appear sometimes to say yes. A black swan. And if then you ask whether they therefore changed their behavior in some respect, sometimes they say yes once more. Another black swan.

Delegitimization

Frankly, I do not get it, those outraged reactions from the Israeli government and other Jewish circles on the announcement by the EU of a boycott of products from the settlements. What I do not get particularly is the assertion that this boycot entails delegitimisation of Israel.

Delegitimization refers to statements by enemies of Israel who claim that the state of Israel has been founded on false grounds, thus has no right to exist and should actually disappear.

That you’re worried about that kind of statements, I get that. Here the raison d’être of one’s state is put into question, and you do not necessarily have to be Jewish to find that threatening. And also completely misplaced, because Israel is based on a decision of the United Nations and is therefore firmly established in international law as almost no other country.

But precisely this last observation makes those ‘deeply hurt’ sounds from Israel so incomprehensible. Because if you sincerely want to continue along in the international legal system you can not go shopping there and select your own favourites. You will have to play the game conform to the rules.

Fortunately, the rules are fairly nuanced: Israel’s legitimacy is not in question, but the occupation of the West Bank is illegal. The conclusions which are subsequently drawn on the basis of those principles are equally nuanced: boycott of Israeli products is not an issue, it is about products from the occupied territories.

By presenting boycott of the latter as an affront to Israel as a whole, Netanyahu turns it into an all-or-nothing game. This is dangerous: Israel therewith quits the legal arena and thus plays into the hands of the delegitimizators. It is no coincidence that the always somewhat anti-Semitic colored British academic circles choose for all: a total boycott of all Israeli academics from outside ánd inside the Green Line. And in the Dutch supermarket otherwise benevolent consumers may, to be sure, decide not to buy anything at all from Israel.

If you really want to prevent delegitimization you will have to comply with the legal system. Then you will constantly have to distinguish between what complies with international law and what does not. And also between products which according to international law are kosher and which are not.

But sometimes I’m afraid I might get it anyway. Namely, that the blunt all-or-nothing story has less to do with the fear of delegitimization, but comes from blind ideological fervor in Israeli government circles.

If so it is even more important to stay within the legal discourse which at the moment is practised by Europe in a pretty correct fashion.

Also see The Village of Norway and The Green Line and the Red Line

Bricks

If you’re even a little sensitive to it, the ugliness of our manmade, built environment may unpleasantly take you by surprise. I am thinking of industrial areas, 1950’s-neighborhoods, modern agricultural complexes.

At the same time at such moments I have the idea that this ugliness of the built environment is a relatively recent phenomenon. Then I feel that there was a period, say up to about 1800, that everything man made was in harmony with the surroundings, and therefore nice. Whether it concerned buildings, tools, furniture or other artifacts.

Of course ancient shovels could be dilapidated and neglected and there could be smell in the streets and along the water. But that is different from the way plastic or concrete or galvanized steel detonate with the environment. The latter do not fit any longer into the natural environment, a break has occurred. It is true, beautiful effects may result from that, but the break is also the cause of the unimaginable ugliness by which we are surrounded.

Sometimes I fancy to recognize the phenomenon of fit and misfit at the level of a simple brick and the radiance that emanates from it. Actually, I've never seen a pre-nineteenth century brick that was not beautiful in the sense that it detonated with the environment. But after 1800 ugly, flat, industrial bricks come up. Fortunately also beautiful bricks are still being made, but by the increasing use of machines and technology a brick is no longer necessarily beautiful: some species of bricks are just ugly.

However, I do not know if my neat before-and-after-1800 schematism is tenable. In any case, it recently was pierced when I saw a medieval cityscape bearing the image of a port crane. The image was probably 15th century, but I found that crane an ugly structure: awkward and artificial, protrusive and technical. In short, it showed all features of ugliness. So, were cranes ugly already long before 1800? Or have they always been, from the outset?

Moral vacuum

Most of us, at least outside the bible belts, are not afraid anymore of an allmighty, punishing God who monitors all of our comings and goings. And as to the omnipotence of nature, we mostly feel (rightly or not) we manage to reduce it to acceptable proportions.

It feels like progress that we are more able to relativize the absolute demands of the high authorities of the past, so that there is no longer a massive set of rules that everyone must obey. We now believe that every person has a right to their own opinions and that other opinions should be respected, even if it produces a multitude of viewpoints.

But where does that progress bring us? Does this trend not necessarily end in a cacophony of opinions and touchiness, or otherwise in aimlessness and indifference?

The Dutch historian Thijs Kleinpaste treats that question. Indeed, he says, we accept each other's equality, but there are many indications that we hardly want to consider the implications. Because real equality would mean that we are aware of the tragedy associated with the collision of several conflicting but legitimate views. Plurality of views means that irreconcilable opinions rubb painfully against each other and that nevertheless you want to keep it that way, says Kleinpaste.

Michael Sandel discusses the same question. He notes that with the disappearance of the great moral legislators (God and Nature) also the moral debate has disappeared. Important issues are only addressed yet in a technocratic or administrative way. We are so aware of the fact that we think differently about the public good, that in the public domain we try to be as neutral as possible and set aside our moral convictions. Hence the embrace of the concept of the free market: that is supposed to be neutral also.

But meanwhile, Sandel says, people yearn for public debate on major ethical issues. He notes that with his students. During debate colleges their faces radiate because they feel included in a community by the debate. Precisely because of the respectful exchange of views, however different, a sense of belonging is created.

But apparently that happens too seldom, Sandel thinks. You might conclude that progress has not yet sufficiently advanced. We hang halfway: God and nature can not scare us any longer with absoluta, nor do they give us moral guidelines. But there is nothing yet which has come instead.

What could possibly take its place? What is needed so that we again get the feeling that something is at stake?

In line with what Sandel says, I think we can take each our own and other people's opinions more seriously. With the effect that we not just tacitly allow everyone to have his opinion, but that we more actively question each other's views. Not in a panting or sensational way, but definitely curiously and eagerly. Because strange enough, that creates commonality.

Also see Holy Fire, Polyphony and Secular Varieties

Unworldly

I do not know if it is true: that the Christian West has always opposed unworldliness and ethereal tendencies that can easily make a religion a bit vague or woolly.

This suggestion is presented in an article by the philosopher Ger Groot when he says that hostility to the world for Christian orthodoxy has always been a form of heresy. But in my opinion in the same article he provides examples to the contrary, such as the deep-rooted conception of truth as eternal and incorporeal, the love of theory, and the Christian hope of the final victory of mind over matter. Which last hope even in secularized form lives on in the pursuit of Stephen Hawking and other leading physicists to achieve a transcendent theory of everything.

One may wonder whether it is not rather the Jewish tradition that represents the resistance against that all-equalizing tendency which missionary religions like Christianity and Islam, but also the Enlightenment, incline to. It is quite a proposition which I formulate here, I realize, but it helps me to better understand a number of historical and social phenomena.

For instance, the centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. It owed its genesis partly to the refusal of the Rabbinical Jewish leaders to accept the – in their eyes bizarre – Christian claims about a cosmic redemption. A bit more supportive evidence should be added to these claims, they reasoned. They were reproached for this sober rejection of lofty heavenly speculations, all through Western history.

From this perspective the earthly, rooted character of Judaism could, at that metaphysical level, at times also be a stumbling block to the secular successors to the lofty-theory-seeking Christianity – precisely because of its earthliness. That might explain why Hawking refuses to participate in the Israeli Presidential Conference of scholars. This refusal goes beyond a boycott of the settlements, which I could understand quite well. Rather, the absoluteness of Hawking’s total boycott demonstrates a metaphysical kind of discomfort with what Judaism stands for.

Then there is in somewhat obscure Western art circles the tendency to associate the Jewish people with the moon – and from there with night and materialism – and Christianity with the sun – and thus with celestial spheres and profundity. Now there’s possibly something right with that, because the Jewish calendar is based on the lunar cycle, and the Christian on the solar cycle. But still, such a theme and the unnecessary associations that go with it, are mainly a manifestation of the Western tendency to look to the skies.

Finally, when the current Pope as he took office warned that “the Church must keep far from worldliness, as worldliness is the devil”, that connects with foundational Christian texts like “You will be in the world but not of the world”. And then I am not sure whether Groots suggestion is tenable, and I feel confirmed in my view that appreciation of the physical and material world is rather a Jewish hobby.

I am sure, however, that my contention is not for  hundred percent true because in the Jewish tradition a certain kind of idealism thrives eminently well. Namely messianism, ie the expectation of a golden future for the world, not least in a moral sense. And not necessarily only reserved for the Jews but as a destination for all humanity.

Also see The Green Line and the Red Line

For and against shame

It is not always convenient that Levinas – and I in his wake – works a lot with the concept of ‘shame’. Because although in a levinassian context that word has no negative connotation – shame can help people to break free from their illusions and mental limitations – nevertheless embarrassment for many people has strong unpleasant connotations.

In everyday language the word shame certainly cán evoke the just mentioned positive associations. But at least as often people’s first association with the word is negative in nature. Then applies: shame, that’s what you obviously want to get rid of. In such cases, it’s difficult to still use the word as having a potentially helpful meaning.

A striking illustration of the heavy negative load of the word is provided by the Dutch sociologist Goudsblom in the introduction to his memoirs. “A beautiful summer afternoon with a clear blue sky. On the street along the new Provincial Road a mother cycles with her son back in the basket. They are both good-humored, the mother cycles, the boy sings a cheerful song. Then they pass a few playing girls. One of the girls says: “Listen to that boy singing”. That’s all she says, but the boy has heard something scornful in her words, and he immediately stops singing. He feels caught, without knowing why”.

Goudsblom begins his memoirs with this event “because the fight against shame remained a constant in my life”. Here shame and the determination to finish it appear as a guiding theme and program for an entire lifetime.

A slightly different approach to shame I find in A.F.Th. van der Heijden. This writer also departs from the negative interpretation of the concept but he ultimately bends the negativity into something positive. Shame is a dismal experience which should be avoided as much as possible, but yet it may excite feelings of honor and encourage people to exceptional performance.

Following the death of his son Tonio, Van der Heijden notes that he has become grimmer and more pretentious. “From Tonio's death I have learned to never do something just like that. That has to do with a process that I call ‘enshaming’: things I used to be proud of have lost their luster. This shame challenges my creative ambition: to get above it, that’s what concerns me now”.

A third, more positive, view of shame is presented by Coen Simon in his book Guilt. About the things we do not need. Guilt and shame with him are no ‘sin’ or something that you have to overcome. They are implicit in the human condition and therefore things to be accepted. Because of the lack of an absolute starting point we never know how to act. But we pretend we know it, says Simon. And then get ashamed. There’s nothing wrong with that, it is a way to come closer to reality.

How is it possible that the associations with the word shame are so varied with  different  people? I think the differences in approach can to a large extent be explained because there are different kinds of shame at stake. In the more positive views of the word (as in Levinas and Simon) it is in fact all about think-shame: the realization that all thinking – that is: also your own thinking – produces illusions. Being caught producing illusions can certainly be painful, but it does not necessarily feel as a failure-shame, because illusion production is too much linked to the nature of thought itself, and thus to our human condition.

The other – more negatively experienced – kinds of embarassment involve failure-shame: you  perform sub-standard, at least below the level that you or others expect from you. You feel put on show in front of collegues and others. And that’s what you are determined to avoid henceforth.

I do not think it is wrong to use the word ‘shame’ to indicate both the feeling of embarrassment that occurs in the unmasking of an illusion, and the awkwardness which comes with underperformance. But it is good to keep in mind which type of shame can be associated only with negativity, and which type can also be interpreted positively.

Also see Hazardous and Something small

Amazement

Am I right to notice a kind of amazement in the coverage of the Israeli response to the Syrian uprising? As if there is no complia

 determined ally or adversary. ‘The Mossad’ did not sprinkle poison yet in President Assad’s wineglass. Expectations on the basis of the images do not materialize and therefore with some people confusion strikes.

First there was for many years rhetorical violence to and fro between Syria and Israel, while the actual situation was one of armed peace. This situation was enforced as strictly as possible by both countries, precisely for the sake of stability. When the revolt broke out in Syria Israel watched this with concern, because it is better to have for neighbor the enemy you know than one or many you do not know.

But early this year an Israeli military official told that his government would like to strengthen some groups of Syrian rebels, namely the more moderate and "friendly” ones which according to him exist between them.

On the other hand, in March the Chief of Staff of the Israeli army Lieutenant General Benny Gantz believed the risk of escalation is great. “We can only hope that the strategic reserves of the Syrian army including chemical weapons will not fall into the hands of the terrorists”, Gantz said. He found things were safer in the hands of the Assad regime.

At the end of May Israel warns Assad that the army “knows what to do” in case the much bespoken delivery of advanced Russian anti-aircraft missiles to the regime of President Assad would actually take place. At that moment Israel had executed already several air raids in Syria, by which probably arms supplies were destroyed that were destined for Hezbollah.

So, what is Israel’s position exactly? And should one suspect imperialist plans behind it?

Or could it simply be that Israel wants security and lets itself be guided by that consideration in its actions? It’s true, they exist: Israeli expansionists bent on expansion of Israeli territory. These are the settlers in the West Bank, which insidiously usurp areas. They are dangerous and unsympathetic indeed, and their violence can not be crossed off against barbarity – however large – which takes place elsewhere in the region. And it is also true that the Israeli army lets itself be used too often for their interests: settlers in the West Bank are considered citizens who are entitled to protection. Even though many officers and soldiers do not agree with their behavior.

But with regard to the Syrian question it are sober security experts who try in a cool and reasoned manner to keep the ammunitiondump as wet as possible. Fortunately that’s the the Israeli army’s core business.