Monday, May 24, 2010

Learning to act right (11) … One dimension too few


Learning to act right (11) … One dimension too few
Torrey Orton
May 24, 2010

 
As I've pushed this project along, the gathering pace has exposed me repeatedly to the fact that others really do see the world differently from me. This simple truth, which I've espoused for years and can provide an epistemology for in a flash, I still did not see so clearly as when reading their stories of ethical learning. Another follows below which revealed to my supposedly open eyes that the ethical part of their stories is as much in how they tell the story as it is the what of each story - the ethical challenges, details and delights.



One dimension too few….
'you can't fix problems using the same level of thinking
you used to create them' (paraphrasing Einstein)
by Charles Brass



In 1995 a group of people of which I was a significant part created a not-for-profit organisation whose mission was 'to engage all Australians in creating a better future for work'.


One of the ways in which this was to be achieved was to create 'demonstration projects' through which better ways of working might be practically explored. In our fantasies at the time, many of these demonstration projects were envisaged to grow to become viable businesses in their own right, at which point they would be used to seed further projects.


Early in 2002 one of those involved from the beginning approached me with the tantalising prospect that one of our 'demonstrations' was now a viable (ie profitable) business and was beginning to explore how to use this 'profit' to benefit the community. On that basis I eagerly joined the Board of the entity, where I found myself alongside my colleague, the CEO and two other members of the local community.


Within four months the community board members had resigned, citing doubt that the organisation was as profitable as the accounts suggested. That should have been enough of a warning, but it wasn't.


Officially, the accounts confirmed a significant surplus and through my efforts we began a sponsorship program designed to significantly benefit the local community.


In August 2002 the CEO went on a month's leave and I acted in the role. For the first time I gained direct experience of the day-to-day practical financial practices of my company (and had personal contact with the staff involved).


My concerns escalated, and ultimately everyone's fears, were proven correct when the organisation was placed into administration and ultimately liquidated early in 2003.


My personal liability for debts incurred exceeded my superannuation and other savings and now, seven years later, I am still in debt.


Arguably, no-one involved was corrupt. Certainly no money was embezzled. However, there was a greater than one million dollar deficit when the company was eventually wound up.


How did three people, all of whom were unarguably focussed on the greater good and not on any personal glory, preside over such a disaster?


Sober reflection from this distance suggests that neither one of us alone would have allowed this situation to develop.


The CEO, who had founded the enterprise, was passionately committed to providing positive outcomes for its clients (funding for which was overwhelmingly provided by the State Government). My colleague had built his business on assisting small business owners to more effectively manage their enterprises, and I had previously been on the Board of a number of companies, including a multi-million dollar global enterprise.


Collectively, however, our blind spots were exquisitely aligned. The CEO had little practical financial expertise (and the accurate valuation of work in progress was a key component in the accounts), my colleague wanted to believe that his approach and his methods would lead to success and interpreted the accounts to support this belief, and I wanted the company to be making a surplus to prove we were doing good work and was very happy to believe his (and the auditor's) interpretation of the accounts.


All of us should have known better, and, truth be told, probably did. But the issue was undiscussable, even when the two Board members resigned. I, in fact, personally worked hard to convince them they were wrong about the company's profitability and that they should stay on Board.


Once the blinkers fell from my eyes, I took action which minimised the loss and (to a small extent at least) protected staff, creditors and clients. However, for a period of nearly 12 months I chose to ignore information which was available to me and to passionately believe in something which was patently not working properly. And yes, I am reminded of story of the person falling from a 100 storey building who, as they are passing the 90th floor is heard to say: "so far so good".


What is right action in these circumstances?


Firstly, I stood up, admitted my culpability and accepted my punishment. Not only did I lose a considerable amount of money, but I endured the wrath of angry staff and creditors at meetings held by the liquidators (I was the only Director who attended, and I haven't missed a meeting in seven years – no, the company is not yet formally wound up, these things do take time).


More importantly, I have thought deeply about blind spots and their implications. By definition, you can't see something that is in your blind spot and if you can't see something it is difficult to know how to properly act on it.


Also by definition, since no-one can know everything, blind spots are inevitable and unavoidable.


Perhaps one way to individually overcome blind spots (as is done when motor vehicles come equipped with multiple rear vision mirrors) is to actively seek different perspectives or lenses through which one sees the world (after all, it was only when I actually sat in the CEOs chair that the situation described here became real to me).


Five years too late, a colleague gave me a question which might trigger alternative perspectives – and I habitually ask it of myself today – 'what is it that I am pretending not to know?'


I find this question helps me consider dimensions and perspectives to which I otherwise might not pay appropriate attention. For example, three years after the incidents described here I was invited to help the Board of a not-for-profit provider of specialist health services resolve an issue with their founder who had transferred the ownership of all their properties to a company he controlled, and now wanted to charge them rent to continue to use them. This seemed like such an egregious breach of trust that I was astounded that the agency which funded the service provider seemed willing to simply increase their funding to cover the rent rather than tackle the issue.


By asking what I was seeing, but not paying attention to, it became clear that officers of the funding body were complicit (probably by omission rather than commission) in the ownership change and hence did not want it investigated. Eventually it became clear that the underlying problem would never be addressed, and the most practical solution was to make the best of the situation.


Considerable pain, and expense, was saved by prompt recognition of a potential blind spot.


However, as I have already implied, in main situation described here there was, in addition, something quite exquisite about the interconnections between our three blind spots, which suggests that there might be a collective perspective to overcoming blind spots.


One of my favourite philosophical theorists (Ken Wilber) suggests there is inevitably a collective perspective, as well as an individual perspective, to any situation; and this experience seems to bear him out.


The simplest way to acknowledge the collective might be to always ensure that multiple people are involved in thinking through key decisions, but the above experience suggests that this might not always be enough.


Insisting on a systematic and structured approach to canvassing the issues involved in making every key decision is another valuable technique, and one which can often be overlooked in the easy familiarity of comradeship.


I am reminded of the story of a business executive who once lost his company a lot of money and was promptly summoned to Head Office. As he walked in to the Chairman's office he forestalled any conversation by proferring his letter of resignation. To which the Chair responded: 'sack you, why would we sack you, we have just spent millions educating you'.


My own education came at the cost of some hundreds of thousands of dollars, and also lost me my job, not to mention two friendships. All because our perspectives were unable to embrace the full scope of the situation.

Appreciation (24) … Affecting effects


Appreciation (24) … Affecting effects
Torrey Orton
May 24, 2010
One coin, two sides

 
Many interesting things stare me in the face and go unnoticed for their everydayness. One unremarkable day I noticed that two words have been a constant source of low-grade irritation for me for decades – affect and effect. The irritation is that I almost always have to decide which one I want under circumstances when the correct choice should be obvious.


I realised that what happens is that I confuse an effect1 with an affect2, and vice-versa. First off, they are both nouns and verbs, and they both overlap with each other. Second, affect is the bigger concept – less differentiated and more prevalent in everyday experienced – e.g. we are constantly affected by our worlds, except when diseased, disordered or focussed!! At those times we are affecting our worlds with emotional infections.


Mental teeth…
My doubtful capacity to clearly discriminate between affects and effects probably signals the lack of mathematical consciousness which prohibited me from taking an interest in the hands on parts of scientific disciplines. I really cannot engage the kind of abstractions which dominate my own profession - psychology – because they don't have enough meat on them, enough visceral contents, to stick in my mental teeth.


On the other hand, I can quite comfortably do theory of time and dilemmas of particle physics (that the process of studying particles required constructing settings – e.g. bubble chambers – to study them, thereby distorting (the real) nature(s)). The latter dilemmas of scientific process are still beyond everyday discourse in the science of psychology. Within the discipline in Australia, it remains largely a dispute conducted across a vast chasm of difference, with an air of disapproval on both sides for the perspectives they cannot take of the others. A failure of professional empathy? See the recent edition of Australian Psychologist, Volume 45, Issue 1 March 2010 , pages 67 – 76 for a discussion bemoaning the continuing dominance of a positivist scientific paradigm in our discipline.


This may betray my naturally integral frame of mind which can also handle contextualised numbers like restaurant bills intuitively within a few dollars of the staff calculated truth. The effect of a bill is a reduction of cash-in-hand, while the affect may be a kitchen of fine tastes and a stomach's satiation. A preference for the former may lead to entertaining memorable for its meanness of spirit rather than the lingering of its tastes, textures and colours. Or maybe I should just note that the effect of eating well is an affect.


Whichever way the preferences work, one thing is increasingly clear to some researchers in my profession – that thought, action and emotion cannot be considered apart from each other. No human thought occurs without an embodied emotional aspect which is experienced as feeling(s). The almost unreadably intense review of this research by Carroll E. Izard (Emotion Theory and Research: Highlights, Unanswered Questions and Emerging Research Annual Review of Psychology; 2009. 60:1–25) provides some hard science underpinnings of the cognitive dominance of affect over effect in certain phases and events of life development processes.


The underlying problem here is the lack of understanding of the integral nature of experience. This lack is intrinsic to the scientific enterprise modelled on physics and chemistry, which proceed by dis-integrating things, by analysing them further and further. The counterpoint to this movement in these sciences is their intuitive, theoretical side. The latter is held at arm's length by the self-described scientists of psychology here in order to maintain the sanctity (?) of their evidence-base. A need to be seen as comparable in treatment specificity (and implicitly, effectiveness) to medicine increasingly drives this preference. It's not a matter of scientific requirements, but medical funding models. Meanwhile Izard reminds us:

 
Emotions are motivational and informational, primarily by virtue of their experiential or feeling component. Emotion feelings constitute the primary motivational component of mental operations and overt behavior.
(pg. 3, emphasis supplied)


What can a psychological science do which does not proceed from that assumption? That which does not finds itself endlessly struggling with dissociated affect.


Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Being here (2) …. Hurdles along the way to now…not submitting to sleep.


Being here (2) …. Hurdles along the way to now…not submitting to sleep.
Torrey Orton
May 11, 2010
The pull of doing (and having?) on being.


As I was contemplating my sleep disciplines and decision-making, I realised that for longer than I can remember I really had not been outside the boundaries of my self-imposed requirement to be doing something most of the time. I never just let go, though I am an agile napper. Yes, I can let go a little, and this acknowledges a capacity to be with how I am at various moments – to feel tiredness unmitigated by purposeful overdrive (which I apply automatically of course). It's not a virtue, just a normal adult habit, started in the depths of early childhood by requirements of others. Not a vice of theirs either, just normal bending to the wheel.


But, this napping and self-acknowledgment occurs in the blind spots of the general commandment to be doing something. The closest I get to evading the commandment are periods of mindless activity like shopping, lawning (my nephew's word for grass cutting when he was three helping push a hand mower around our yard) and car cleaning. I almost do not feel the commandment, only know it by inference from occasional awareness (as that which started this reverie) of deep, undifferentiated drives sturdily pulling/pushing away at me all the time … the flowing undercurrent of my energies.


Consciousness carved
I am imagining this current as the sort which flows through caverns and crevices in deep limestone formations, trackable by spelunkers 'til the point of nowaythrough where quiet waters slide between too-narrow gaps in smoothed stone. An out of sight consciousness this, its weirdness perhaps signalled by the very different names for the same exploration - caving, potholing, canyoning and spelunking. The surface evidence of these formations are the famous canyons of flash flood fame, followed by potholes which have surface access, and then caves which are 99% out of sight.


Anyway, it is an unbalanced drive this flow. I am extremely good at putting my often unconscious perception of the demand of the moment before longer term considerations of my health, rest, preparation, etc. I think this experience is related to that of low grade chronic stress, where the original stressors are now out of sight, but the drain on the total system continues. It is a hurdle I usually do not even notice I am stumbling over on my way to my possibly being present.


Recently I have had therapy clients fronting up with similar hurdles. Probably they have more often been there than I've noticed. So, insight into others follows insight into self, which allows more delicate evidence to become visible. Strange to think of stress as delicate.


NB – I do much of my writing these days by starting with a theme, image, or perception strong enough to demand a first step recording – a note in my always handy pad - and then letting it unfold from the act of writing itself. Putting down the first elaboration of the image elicits other words allied to those already on the page in some way which often is not immediately apparent…I used to sketch outlines of posts, but have found that they do not advance the production all that much. Revisiting the partially developed piece does the job of extracting its completion from the further images and perceptions which those already down pull up from my innards.





 

Friday, May 7, 2010

Rectifications (23) – Rough surface, and a Dip?


Rectifications (23) – Rough surface, and a Dip?
Torrey Orton– May 7, 2010
Some rough stuff ….

 
While "confronting" images and concepts abound these days (as they may always have done so?), some are astounding for their inanity. Road works again are among the more perniciously presumptuous, as if their owners put them around sporadically to remind us they are on the job. Or, they partially do the job like announcing from every perspective that there's road works on the side street and failing to note that that means you can't get through in a 4-wheel drive.


But among my most loved are small, caring missives letting the passing trade know that a minor irritant awaits us…a potential hitch in the otherwise silky passage to which we are accustomed on Victorian freeways, and byways. Take this for instance:


ROUGH
SURFACE


It and its twin arrived on Madden (no ministerial relation??) Grove, Richmond, a few weeks ago - one for each direction of traffic as they should be. I've been reaching for an expression of our experience of "rough" going either way. It requires a deft linguistic touch, similar to the sense a lip has for a loose hair sneaking in a partly open mouth. Anyway, the rough is a slight butt massage as the tire impacts are couched by the shock absorbers... so slight that without the signage we would not have noticed anything at all, and we were feeling for it with the advantage of the advanced notice.


Now the smart research types will tell me that forewarning is a violation of research protocols, so I should just pack the whole complaint in a mental kit bag and sign off!! Of course, rough's rough for someone, why else a sign? By chance, as I walked up to contemplate the warning above, two road workers (private contracting company, of course) stopped just ahead of me and 20 meters short of the sign. They were doing curbside storm water repairs – ensuring the drains are open for the next local deluge. I asked the shovel wielder why the sign was there and he acknowledged my wonder with his own at the "rough" component of its warning. He and his driver colleague had not felt a thing themselves. "I'll put in a query", he volunteered. My research reliability quotient just shot up, but I forget to ask him to put me on his customer query list. Validity down!


…and then, a dip?

 
There's an elder sibling to Rough Surface on the Westgate Freeway eastbound about three ks short of the bridge: "Dip" forewarns a gliding drop which registers slightly at 100kph as a fleeting weightlessness of my 110kgs as the seat dropped I'd guess 30 cms over 2-3 meters. We've been passing through this warning for 6 months or more and keep looking for the indicators of death and destruction which would warrant it. Did some hoonmobile with a three inch clearance owned by a vacuous entity (micro-celebrity) bottom out on the offending gulch at 150kph? Did s/he construe their own indulgence as an offence by VicRoads which some under-employed accident compensation barrister could extract fees for?? Why else the warning??


Real dips and crests with unacknowledged roughs


Now all this has reminded me of Jane's reminders to me that there are unacknowledged dips in country roads with seriously catastrophic potentials. When I first got off the boat in Oz (yes, I did get off a boat in '73) I had never seen a road as long or straight as many western district country roads, or even the Geelong road at the time. On some of these, real dips existed where a car could be totally hidden from the view of on-coming cars. These days most such are marked DIP, at least within 100ks of the GPO. Disregard for the warning while passing is an invitation to a terminal open road head-on. As for rough surfaces, there were many, and still are in all their unmarked originality.



Sunday, May 2, 2010

Learning to act right (8)…. Taking an ethics course


Learning to act right (8)…. Taking an ethics course
Torrey Orton
May 2, 2010
When I first got hold of ethical learning as an objective for my productive desires, I talked to various people about it. The following came back unsolicited, arising spontaneously as a gift to the very bare cupboard of offerings I had in hand. He said:
Hi, Torrey.
This took longer than expected.
I spent a week reflecting on it after we had dinner.
Perhaps part of the elusive nature of pinpointing such experiences is that they become part of who we are and how we see the world. They are under the skin, so to speak.
Thanks for the work.
Scott


At the time I replied:
S,
Thanks for this …your contribution is an important addition to my sense of what this project should / could be
t.


There followed a break of a few weeks, and here it is.
My most influential ethical learning took place in The Melbourne School of Philosophy, which I attended one evening per week from the age of 19 to 22.
In the school's own words: "The School began in London in 1936 when a small group of people came together to study economics, seeking an understanding of the universal laws that govern the relations between people in society. They hoped to discover principles that would help to eliminate the social ills prevailing at that time."
The School of Philosophy presented teachings from various religions and philosophies: the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, Buddhism, Plato, Socrates, Spinoza, the economist/philosopher Henry George and many others.
You might expect such a school to be New Age, but it was quite the opposite. If anything, it was relatively conservative, both in politics and social conventions. The male teachers invariably wore suits, the women dresses, and I never once heard anyone say "Yeah, man."
What was most effective about the school was its motto of "testing the teachings in the light of one's own experience". The lecturers presented the various teachings in class, and asked students to experiment with them in real life during the week.
The following week, the same group of students would discuss their experiences, saying how they had put the teachings into practice and what the result had been. Then the next set of teachings would be presented.
Also, upon leaving each class, students were given a card with between five and ten quotations summarising that week's principles. These quotations might be from any of the sources mentioned in the second paragraph, as well as Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Yeats and other influential thinkers and doers.
The practical focus of the school made the teachings very real and applicable. Hearing the various stories from the week was illustrative, highly entertaining, moving and sometimes hilarious. You would hear anecdotes from lawyers, motor mechanics, actors, dentists, bike couriers, fashion photographers, university economics lecturers, entrepreneurs and boxers, all on topics like "Experiencing deeper levels of being through stillness," or "The nature of justice and injustice. Transcending fear."
We were also given some small exercises to heighten awareness and presence, such as pausing between activities during the week to reconnect with the senses and observe the workings of the mind. These short exercises were connected with the various material presented in class.
I finally left when I started to feel that the school expected an increasing level of "belief", as opposed to their introductory stance of not accepting the teachings as doctrine. This was the school's biggest shortcoming.
Nevertheless, I would still say that attending the school was a positive experience which taught me a lot about myself and my interactions with the world.


By Scott Wallace March 2, 2010