An early family Christmas in my hometown, and something suddenly hits me with blinding clarity - I’ve been running away from my upbringing all my life. I’m now in my forties, so that’s nearly 30 years of flight. Soon it'll be two years of running for every one year of upbringing. Perhaps it’s time to stop and work out why I’ve spent all this time running away, as well as what I’m actually running towards.
Yet I’m hardly alone. Many of the most ambitious people I meet are also the most discontented, with many also defined more by what they are running away from, than by what they seek. Yet it's only when we work out where we are running to, rather than where we're running from, that we can be truly effective in our pursuits. At least that’s my view – as articulated in What’s Stopping You?
With my own story, I need to add two immediate caveats. This isn’t a rejection of my family, although in many cases it clearly challenges their values. My family had its problems (few don’t), and my position in it was also somewhat strained. But I am perfectly content to return home regularly – including at Christmas – and have spent many happy hours as an adult drinking late into the night with my dad, putting the world to rights over malt whiskies and sweeping statements, and have swapped much gossip and many problems with my mum over tea and cake.
And this isn’t a rejection of where I come from. Essex (American readers should think of New Jersey) has its detractors – me one of them on occasion. It can sometimes revel too much in its trashiness, although it also has some values that I think worthwhile. It’s home to more self-made millionaires than any other county and the whole place reeks of endeavour and bootstrapped achievement. There are few silver spoons in Essex, which is massively to its advantage. And in terms of effort – in everything (personal appearance as much as work) – Essex men and women would top any league table in the country.
Yet, still, I ran away. I was utterly convinced I was missing out on something. Ssomething big and exciting. And I was right. From the age of 19 I’ve lived in three cities – London, Manchester and New York – all big and bad metropolises. In some ways my three chosen cities have defined urban living since the industrial revolution and I’ve basked in the vibrancy, tension and shabbiness of all three. I’ve read their histories, explored their nooks and crannies, and learnt their secrets.
There’s a psychological side to this, however. We emerge from our childhood with hard-wired feelings of confidence – being a winner within the system we’ve encountered – or with insecurities. Of being one of the system’s losers. Quite naturally the winners are inclined to stay and enjoy the mastery of their surroundings, while the losers are keen to move on. Most definitely I was one of the system’s losers. Even at the time, I thought the education I encountered lacking: not just quality of teaching or facilities – it lacked compassion, individualism, methodology, reasoning and purpose. It was a Darwinian education – survival was all that mattered, with the closest approximation to Fred Flintstone declared the winner. What’s there not to run away from?
And the brutality of the education system spilled over into the social life of the town. Schoolmates became gangs with silly names, battling with other gangs with equally silly names: in pub car parks, behind the kebab shop, occasionally on the dance floor. Excited and appalled in equal measure, it was only after I saw a “Prize Guy” being carried to an ambulance – unconscious and hooked up to a blood-transfusion unit after an unprovoked attack from a “Baddow Surfer” – that I really saw the utter pointlessness of it all. Although prosperous, our town was culturally dead – with casual violence filling the void.
Yet it wasn’t the gang violence that alienated me from my hometown. It was my insecurities. Short, skinny and under-confident, I detested the town’s nightlife because it projected the same brutal values as the playground of my failing comprehensive school. The successful men were all large and brash, as were the nightclubs. As were the women come to that. To them all – Dave, Tracy, Steve the bouncer – I was the angst-ridden weedy guy: a pseudo-intellectual gobshite. Losing myself in the madding crowds of major cities was by far my best option.
Whether on Oxford Street, Deansgate or Fifth Avenue, being a nobody in the crowd is certainly comforting for insecure people. As Holden Caulfield discovered as far back as the 1940s, there’s something wonderfully poetic about alienation in a big city. It feels like one of those pop videos in which the singer stands motionless watching the accelerated masses whizz by.
The scale of the buildings, the bustle of the streets, the thousands upon thousands of anonymous people – wow! The loneliness – intellectual or otherwise – is more than offset by the potential of such as place. Big cities are sociable yet furtive, democratic yet cool, frenetic yet tolerant. They are everything small town exurbia isn’t – and I’ve wallowed in them all my adult life.
Yet that’s not good enough. Running away is pointless without a pursuit. Being the fox results, at best, in escape. Far better to be the hound that seeks its prey. I encounter runaways all the time when interviewing candidates for a job. Fantastically able to explain the shortcomings of their existing path (as I am at articulating the failings of my hometown), they seize up or manage only platitudes when asked where they want to go. Partly, this is because they suspect a trick question – they perhaps think the answer I seek is one of loyalty and dedication. Yet it isn’t – it would be ridiculous to expect such apostolicism from a stranger. I want the people I employ to have direction. Only then can I calculate whether our paths will coincide long enough for me to offer them a job.
Knowing where we want to end up is difficult – especially for the young. But choose a destination and the route becomes a lot clearer, and a lot more enjoyable. And most goal-setting books (including mine in WSY?) will tell you that determining an objective is enormously helped by calculating our values. Which, of course, can be informed by what we reject.
For instance, Richard Reynolds set up the Guerrilla Gardening movement because he detested the neglect of urban public spaces, especially around his home in South London’s Elephant & Castle. Meanwhile, I became involved with the City Fringe Partnership, which helps enterprise on the edges of London’s financial district, due to a similar concern for the gaps in urban life (unfortunately the CFP has now closed).
In both cases, the interloper could be accused of becoming the zealot. Yet that’s no less harsh than viewing me as a weedy pseudo-intellectual gobshite. Being the new fish keen to contribute is better than being the fish out of water, for sure. More properly, it’s our expression of love for the place we’ve found – the haven that’s not where we’ve run away from. And if we want to make it a better place, then it’s also given us direction. This makes a hound of the fox – turning our flight into our pursuit. And, suddenly, all that running away looks like it means something after all.
Happy Christmas!
Showing posts with label New Jersey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Jersey. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Developing compassion: bankers
A reposting (and re-editing) of old-blog posts I like.
On several occasions recently, I have found myself defending bankers. This goes way beyond my day job of running a PR agency that’s focused, to a large extent, on banks. In reality the agency positively profiles the products and services of banks (and others) to sophisticated audiences such as corporate treasurers, financial institutions and other banks. In this defence I was defending bankers themselves. Like Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, I was even defending greed.
To many this really will seem like the ultimate exercise in trying to develop compassion, as recommended by Don't Sweat The Small Stuff author Richard Carlson (and as explained in my previous posts). Yet for me – as an ex banker – it is probably more the other way around. It is me asking others to examine their – perhaps stereo-typical, perhaps (even) a touch prejudicial – views on a section of society currently the target of a great deal of loathing from all “right-thinking” people.
First let’s defend bankers themselves. Much of my defence focuses on my view that the typical banker is a long way their unsavoury media stereo-type of shouting yobs in red braces or arrogant and braying fools at a race track or in a nightclub. Of course, those types exist but they are a tiny minority compared to the thousands upon thousands employed in the financial services industry, even on the trading floors. In fact the vast majority of bankers are very normal people – perhaps even too normal to many of their detractors.
If I was to paint a stereo-type of a City banker, therefore, it would be of a conservatively-dressed, state-educated, family man or woman travelling in from their newish home in one of the nicer suburbs in the Essex or Kent commuter belt (or New Jersey or Connecticut if in New York). They undertake highly-technical, highly-specialised work – often working long hours. They don’t smoke, drink only moderately and don’t know the first thing about recreational drugs. Their main passions are golf, squash and maybe Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United at the weekend (though probably not since the kids were born).
Of course they are ambitious. These are the children of working-class Londoners (or Scots or Northerners or Asians for that matter), seeing the financial services industry as their route to advancement. Indeed, my father would often state that his generation of post-war working class men advanced into the respectable middle classes via the sciences. Well, for our generation, the same can be said of the City (or Wall Street). While most creative careers (at least the lucrative ones) remain the preserve of the privately-educated elite, those seeking advancement from the sometimes painfully-low horizons of a poor education and an inept social training now focus on the financial services.
But what of the greed that was supposed to have nearly destroyed the banking system in 2008? Indeed, saying someone has the stereo-type wrong does not undermine the concept of greed, or its role in the banking crisis. And while I could put a technical spin on the crisis – in part blaming the “law of unintended consequences” from previous rounds of regulation (Basel II and IAS-39 being two regulations worth examining in this respect) – it would be stupid to say that greed played no part.
So can I defend greed in order to try and evoke a compassion for bankers? I can try – perhaps by turning the debate around and examining those that detest bankers and their greedy ilk. For this I need to make reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Abraham Maslow was interested in exemplary people and their motivations (Eleanor Roosevelt was a particular focus), which turned into a “ theory of human needs and self-actualisation”. Usually expressed as a pyramid, Maslow – in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality – states that humans move up from the basic physiological needs for food, water and sleep, to require safety in the form of shelter, employment and health. Above that humans need friendship and love and above that self-esteem, confidence, achievement and respect. And at the very top of the pyramid are attributes such as morality and creativity.
The important point here is that, at all levels, money is simply a means to an ends. Material advancement is no more than a ladder up to the next level. Certainly, Maslow contends that we cannot graduate up to the next level without satisfying the needs of the lower level. Only once we have food and water can we think about shelter and security. Only once we have safety can we think about love and belonging. Only once we are loved can we think about self-esteem and respect. And only once we have self respect do we crave morality and seek to express ourselves creatively. Interpret this into career ladders, ambitions and a focus on material advancement and it is easy to come to a view regarding why some people still seek wealth (if only to get their children to the top of the pyramid via a private education) while others seek more spiritual rewards.
And it might also be the case that, once at the higher level – perhaps thanks to the efforts of a previous generation – it is difficult to develop compassion for those in the immediate level below, while compassion for those well below us in Maslow’s hierarchy comes naturally. Certainly, it is easier to be compassionate about those seeking food or shelter than those seeking material advancement so their kids can also reach the podium of creativity and morality. But that doesn’t preclude us from at least trying – even if, to adopt a very Carlsonian concept, it is just for fun. And if even if that won’t work? Even if we still hate those “greedy” bankers? Never mind – we can at least comfort ourselves with the thought that that their children may be more to our taste.
One last note on this. In no way is this a judgement or a condemnation of those that attack bankers or greed – or those that have made it to that happy place at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy (however they got there). It is simply a plea, in the best Carlsonian tradition, to “develop our compassion”. The point being that the harder this seems, the more worthwhile the exercise.
On several occasions recently, I have found myself defending bankers. This goes way beyond my day job of running a PR agency that’s focused, to a large extent, on banks. In reality the agency positively profiles the products and services of banks (and others) to sophisticated audiences such as corporate treasurers, financial institutions and other banks. In this defence I was defending bankers themselves. Like Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, I was even defending greed.
To many this really will seem like the ultimate exercise in trying to develop compassion, as recommended by Don't Sweat The Small Stuff author Richard Carlson (and as explained in my previous posts). Yet for me – as an ex banker – it is probably more the other way around. It is me asking others to examine their – perhaps stereo-typical, perhaps (even) a touch prejudicial – views on a section of society currently the target of a great deal of loathing from all “right-thinking” people.
First let’s defend bankers themselves. Much of my defence focuses on my view that the typical banker is a long way their unsavoury media stereo-type of shouting yobs in red braces or arrogant and braying fools at a race track or in a nightclub. Of course, those types exist but they are a tiny minority compared to the thousands upon thousands employed in the financial services industry, even on the trading floors. In fact the vast majority of bankers are very normal people – perhaps even too normal to many of their detractors.
If I was to paint a stereo-type of a City banker, therefore, it would be of a conservatively-dressed, state-educated, family man or woman travelling in from their newish home in one of the nicer suburbs in the Essex or Kent commuter belt (or New Jersey or Connecticut if in New York). They undertake highly-technical, highly-specialised work – often working long hours. They don’t smoke, drink only moderately and don’t know the first thing about recreational drugs. Their main passions are golf, squash and maybe Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United at the weekend (though probably not since the kids were born).
Of course they are ambitious. These are the children of working-class Londoners (or Scots or Northerners or Asians for that matter), seeing the financial services industry as their route to advancement. Indeed, my father would often state that his generation of post-war working class men advanced into the respectable middle classes via the sciences. Well, for our generation, the same can be said of the City (or Wall Street). While most creative careers (at least the lucrative ones) remain the preserve of the privately-educated elite, those seeking advancement from the sometimes painfully-low horizons of a poor education and an inept social training now focus on the financial services.
But what of the greed that was supposed to have nearly destroyed the banking system in 2008? Indeed, saying someone has the stereo-type wrong does not undermine the concept of greed, or its role in the banking crisis. And while I could put a technical spin on the crisis – in part blaming the “law of unintended consequences” from previous rounds of regulation (Basel II and IAS-39 being two regulations worth examining in this respect) – it would be stupid to say that greed played no part.
So can I defend greed in order to try and evoke a compassion for bankers? I can try – perhaps by turning the debate around and examining those that detest bankers and their greedy ilk. For this I need to make reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Abraham Maslow was interested in exemplary people and their motivations (Eleanor Roosevelt was a particular focus), which turned into a “ theory of human needs and self-actualisation”. Usually expressed as a pyramid, Maslow – in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality – states that humans move up from the basic physiological needs for food, water and sleep, to require safety in the form of shelter, employment and health. Above that humans need friendship and love and above that self-esteem, confidence, achievement and respect. And at the very top of the pyramid are attributes such as morality and creativity.
The important point here is that, at all levels, money is simply a means to an ends. Material advancement is no more than a ladder up to the next level. Certainly, Maslow contends that we cannot graduate up to the next level without satisfying the needs of the lower level. Only once we have food and water can we think about shelter and security. Only once we have safety can we think about love and belonging. Only once we are loved can we think about self-esteem and respect. And only once we have self respect do we crave morality and seek to express ourselves creatively. Interpret this into career ladders, ambitions and a focus on material advancement and it is easy to come to a view regarding why some people still seek wealth (if only to get their children to the top of the pyramid via a private education) while others seek more spiritual rewards.
And it might also be the case that, once at the higher level – perhaps thanks to the efforts of a previous generation – it is difficult to develop compassion for those in the immediate level below, while compassion for those well below us in Maslow’s hierarchy comes naturally. Certainly, it is easier to be compassionate about those seeking food or shelter than those seeking material advancement so their kids can also reach the podium of creativity and morality. But that doesn’t preclude us from at least trying – even if, to adopt a very Carlsonian concept, it is just for fun. And if even if that won’t work? Even if we still hate those “greedy” bankers? Never mind – we can at least comfort ourselves with the thought that that their children may be more to our taste.
One last note on this. In no way is this a judgement or a condemnation of those that attack bankers or greed – or those that have made it to that happy place at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy (however they got there). It is simply a plea, in the best Carlsonian tradition, to “develop our compassion”. The point being that the harder this seems, the more worthwhile the exercise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)