Transforming Communication

Developments!

2008-12-09T13:18:00.008Z

It’s been a while since my last post here, but the stats still show that visitors are coming. Which I’m very happy about!

I just wanted to say that I have a new site at jamessouttar.com which is now going to be my permanent ‘work’ presence on the web, and it includes a ‘scrapbook’ tumblelog (i.e. a kind of ‘words and pictures’ blog) as well as the complete text of my book Transforming Communication. The book contains pretty much everything I’ve written about visual communication: the essays and articles I’ve written for various publications, (an edited version) of the many posts I made to the GRAPHICS-L list in the nineties and everything that I posted here. What’s more, you can download it for free as an e-book! (The only ‘price’ is that you have to find it on the site, which increases my ‘page impressions’ in Google Analytics and makes me feel like the effort of making the site was worthwhile ;-)

If any of you feel minded to link to the new site, you will be assured of my undying gratitude (since this will materially effect its ranking in Google, unlike the number of visits which simply boosts my vanity - and gives me hope, perhaps unduly, that someone one day might offer me a job ;-)

What’s going to happen here? I’m not sure at the moment. Perhaps I’ll start writing again? But maybe not for the moment.

With best wishes to everyone who reads here (and seasonal greetings!)

James

The Narcissistic Brand

2008-05-20T13:19:00.015+01:00

Over the last few months I've become fascinated by the psychology of narcissism. Since this was first identified as a pathological condition by Freud, it has stimulated a great deal of investigation with some very interesting findings. What I find so striking about it, however, is the way that it seems to describe a fundamental condition of our whole society.

Like the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus, who was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection until — unable to consummate this impossible love — he pined away, a narcissist is someone who is heavily invested in an image of himself or herself but, behind the image, may be living a much impoverished reality. So, for instance, a narcissist may give a great deal of attention to other people's problems, because he wants to present an image of a ‘concerned’ person, but may fail to attend to his own needs. Indeed, he may berate himself because he doesn’t live up to the image he has created. This description might sound strange to those who imagine that narcissism is related to vanity, but a moment’s reflection shows that the ardent supporter of causes may be just as vain as the fashionista or dandy.

The standard work on psychological diagnosis, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV-R) describes narcissism as a ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy’. Again, it may be surprising to suggest that a ‘concerned’ person might be suffering from lack of empathy. But in fact one can see this frequently in the behaviour of celebrities or politicians who seek to highlight others’ plight to win admiration but who, beyond the cameras, are merely exploiting those they purport to help.

The DSM also gives a list of indicators of narcissism, with the display of more than five of these suggesting that a person is suffering from a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It states that such a person:

has a grandiose sense of self-importance
is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
believes that he or she is ‘special’ and unique
requires excessive admiration
has a sense of entitlement
is interpersonally exploitative
lacks empathy
is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

[source: wikipedia]

For a moment, let’s consider these characteristics not in relation to a person but to an organization. Can you think of any organizations that project a grandiose sense of self-importance? Are preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love? Would like to get you to believe that they are special and unique? More to the point, can you think of any organizations that don’t manifest at least five of these qualities?

Of course these characteristics don’t all relate to the organization’s image. The exploitation, lack of empathy and arrogance may be hidden away in the impoverished reality of the organization — the unpublicised day-to-day experience of its staff, and perhaps some of its other stakeholders as well. So, for instance, behind the lovable, cosy supermarket brand there may be an unhappy history of nailing down farmers and other suppliers to unrealistic prices. And behind the self-important bank brand there may be a pattern of intimidating, overworking and bullying staff. This is the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde nature of narcissism: the outward need for admiration and approval but the inward reality of exploitation and unconcern.

Interestingly, there is a connection between these two sides that is not always obvious. The narcissist may, for instance, be seen as someone who cares inordinately about his or her appearance: someone who spends hours each day in the gym, undergoes expensive cosmetic surgery, constantly worries about her diet. But none of these behaviours reflect a concern about the body: indeed the body is made to suffer for the image. And it is the same with organizations: there may be great concern, for instance, with ‘corporate social responsibility’ but the narcissistic organization will suffer for its looks, make great sacrifices to be newsworthy, but its motives will always be to cultivate an image. (This is one reason, incidentally, why the world’s great spiritual traditions all censure public displays of charity — Jesus’ ‘ when you give, do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret’ can be seen as a protective against worsening one’s narcissism.)

The phenomenon of the brand can be seen as one of the most potent expressions of a widespread corporate narcissism in our societies. Behind the managed image that is a brand a very different reality may be in place: as with the narcissistic individual, the more investment there is in the image, the more ‘impoverished’ this reality is likely to be. Meaning, here, that the ‘body’ of the organization, the wellbeing of its staff and the integrity of its social fabric, is made to suffer the dissonance of an image so far out of kilter with the reality — a dissonance that will ultimately produce irreparable damage to that fabric, just as the body obsessed narcissist ultimately does irreparable damage to their body. But it is the impoverishment of the real self that is even greater in narcissism: the authentic feelings, perceptions and values of the individual are ignored in favour of those that look good and a callousness sufficient to put the cultivation of image above all else.

‘An enduring truth, a wise friend once explained to me, is that important social change nearly always begins in hypocrisy. First, the powerful are persuaded to say the appropriate words, that is, to sign a commitment  to higher values and decent behavior. Then social activists must spend  the next ten years pounding on them, trying to make them live up to their promises or persuading governments to enact laws that will compel them to do so.’ So The teisty American journalist William Greider perceptively observed. And it may be that through the hypocrisy of narcissism, its splitting of image from reality, real change becomes possible to both people and organizations. To do so, however, there has to be a point at which the cause celébre transfers from image to reality: where ‘greenwash’ becomes real environmental stewardship. My sense, however, is that corporate narcissism is not so much a route for change to take root in our society as a disastrous pathology that will, as it does in the case of the individual narcissist, result in a crisis of very significant proportions. It is the point at which the image becomes unsustainable — where its facade begins to crumble, where its demands can no longer be met, where it is seen to be hollow and empty inside — that the narcissist comes to the point of breakdown. It’s at this point, too, that its real poverty is revealed: the total lack of authenticity, the neglect of the real self, the ravages on the body.

Design for the New Age (part 2)

2007-12-31T13:18:00.000Z

My previous post, Design for the New Age, ended with this question:

‘But what would design be like if it did embrace the New Age? Many of the central themes of New Age philosophies and practices have considerable relevance — and resonance — for design. And there may be answers here for how designers can find a positive and productive role for themselves in the emerging era.’

After a few months for reflection, this is my attempt at an answer.

One of the central themes linking many New Age philosophies is the concept of harmony. Harmony is usually conceived on the model of musical harmony: two or more notes sounding together to give a pleasing concord. And the interesting thing about musical harmony is that although it can be described in mathematical terms, as the ratio of pitches, it depends on human aesthetic sensibilities to distinguish between what is, and what is not, harmonious.

By extension, then, the concept of harmony can be applied — if only metaphorically — to other situations in which two or more similar entities appear together. In visual communication, for instance, it can be used to describe a satisfying relationship between shapes, colours, types, images etc. But it can also be applied to the relationship between people. A group can be said to be in harmony if there is a fundamental concordance between them. The nature of this concordance may be explained in different ways (sometimes in quite outlandish terms) but nonetheless what is being described depends on the same perception of harmony that occurs to in music. What’s more, harmony appears to be an objective (or at least consensual) factor. Someone with a poorly trained ear may not be able to accurately discern what is harmonious or not, but a trained musician will. And although different cultures have different musical preferences, the ability to perceive harmony is not cultural but biological.

You might argue that designers have always applied such acuity of perception in their work. For instance, even the Modernists —not otherwise known for their considerations of harmony — talked about the ‘balance of unequal masses’. What was lacking before, however, was an understanding of the harmonious as the basic principle of well-being throughout the whole of existence: a principle to be strived for as a primary consideration in all enterprise. This understanding of harmony, and the harmonious, has’t been a part of Western thinking since the Renaissance.

The concept of harmony has a number of aspects, each of which has a slightly different bearing on the understanding of design. The aspect of congruence, for instance, which musically is experienced in the phenomenon of a beautiful, ‘warm’ note with a strong, clear fundamental reinforced by successive, harmonious overtones, has considerable relevance for how we see the designer’s skill. A composition, which in the terms of visual communication might consist of messages, words, type, decoration, imagery, colour, materials etc., works most effectively when all the elements support a clearly expressed intention.

Intensification takes congruence a stage further and shows us that when a number of elements are related in a harmonious way, they reinforce each other’s strengths (and, correspondingly, diminish each other’s weaknesses). As we all know, a group of people harmonised around a shared intention can achieve much more than a single individual. But although we think we know this, we rarely put it into practice – either in human or design terms. The organisation is, after all, the padigm case of what a group of people can achieve when they are able to diversify their functions and individuals can employ their specialisations in concert with others. However, much of what we call management consists of imposing a single point of view rather than leveraging this ‘whole is more than the sum of its parts’. And in design, how often have you seen an image asked to do a job that images can do better than words, without the painfully anxious need to repeat the message in words as well?

The aspect of resonance holds that, just as a tuning fork can spontaneously begin to resonate when the same note is played near to it, so communication might work by a similar resonation of the 'tuning forks' within the human being. This analogy also goes some way towards explaining the phenomenon, mentioned earlier, of how suitably sensitised people have the same perception of what is harmonic and what is not.

The really interesting things about resonance is the way that it shows us that harmony involves the communication, or transference, of energy. The tuning fork doesn’t just start to ‘sing in tune’ because of some process of sympathy, but because its state is actively energised by the instrument played near to it. This point, I believe, is of the greatest possible significance to our understanding of design — and particularly to our experience of designed communication. What is communicated is energy. Not as a secondary or incidental part of the process of communication, but as the principal activity. Communication doesn’t transfer ‘information’: information is, instead, the outward and visible aspect of the transmission of energy.

It’s this recognition that I believe will signal a truly ‘New Age’ design. By which I don’t mean an approach to design that is all incense, crystals, tinkly music and half-understood eclectic spiritual jargon, but a genuinely new kind of designing that echoes the central themes commonly associated with ‘New Age’ ideas. A design that reflects a new humanism: design as if people mattered, design that respects the integrity and — above all — the possibilities of the individual, design that heals.

And that’s the last, and perhaps most controversial, point about harmony that I’d like to make. New Age thinking sees harmony not just as a reflection of wholeness but also as healing. Disharmony is dis-ease but that which is itself harmonious exerts an influence that predisposes towards harmony and thus to healing. This was well understood to the ancients, whose ‘sacred art’ was considered not merely symbolic and representational but also therapeutic. For the communication designer, however, this is perhaps the biggest challenge because the intent of so many designed communications is not to represent wholeness but instead to present ideas, goods and services as if they could provide the wholeness for which a population, out of harmony with itself, craves. Real change in this area will only be possible when organisations reconceive their own purposes, putting ideas like harmony above the pursuit of profits. In fact, this is already happening. An indication is the way the idea of profit achieved at others’ expense is shifting to a more harmonious notion of abundance under the influence a new genre of New Age ‘motivational’ bestsellers such as The Secret.

Misplaced belonging

2007-10-29T12:02:00.000Z

In his book We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson propounds a fundamental insight into modern, Western societies. Since the middle ages, Johnson argues, we have increasingly directed our religious impulses into romantic involvements. The need for fulfilment, the longing for transcendence, the hope of salvation that we once sought in spiritual experience are now projected onto the relationship with a ‘significant other’.

Today we might consider ourselves resolutely secular, but the ‘rationality’ of our position is undermined by our susceptibility to the madness of love. It is the most powerful energy system in Western societies today, Johnson points out. And we continue to allow it to hijack our lives, overturn our careers, sabotage our relationships. The worst of it all, though, is that it doesn’t — can’t — deliver what we hope from it. As Johnson goes on to explain, it is as if we try to pass a million volts of intensity through a system designed, at most, to work with a few hundred.

The problem with romantic love, if we may put it in these terms, is that ordinary human relationships are not able to sustain its expectations. However wonderful he or she may be, another person cannot continue to meet our constant demand for meaningfulness. At a certain point, the ‘magic’ vanishes and we are left looking at our partner in their unvarnished ordinariness. Instead of seizing this opportunity to build a truly human relationship, one based on an appreciation of the other as they are, strengths and weaknesses, faults and virtues, we tend then to start looking for the ‘magic’ elsewhere.

Johnson’s explanation for this phenomenon is that what we look for in our romantic loves is, in fact, ourselves. Specifically, that part of us that Jung described as the anima/animus: the oppositely gendered archetype that is our model of masculinity or femininity. And the more someone can be a blank screen — onto which we can 'project' our template or archetype — the more likely we are to ‘fall in love’ with them. (This explains, amongst other things, why lovers tend to give up their strong opinions and preferences to satisfy the other, and why women often complain that men are turned off by intelligence and a point of view). But the anima (the female archetype in the male psyche) or the animus (the male archetype in the female psyche) is not just a model of what we look for in someone else. Indeed it is not really this at all, which is where all the problems start.

In the Jungian conception the animus/anima is the go-between mediating our little island of consciousness, our ego, with the vast ocean of unconsciousness that makes up the remainder of our psyche. This unconsciousness includes both a superconscious identity (what we might call a 'Higher Self') and a dark ‘shadow’ made up of the things that we have consciously or unconsciously rejected as well as our unlived desires and aspirations. The animus/anima manifests in all its archetypal splendour as an ideal man or woman in dreams, fantasy and artistic expression (where it may even, if we have formed a negative relationship with it, take a malevolent form). But as a transparent part of our everyday makeup it is responsible for our moods, our attitudes and our self-esteem.

In the sphere of corporate identity, the animus/anima frequently crops up as a symbol or logo. Britannia, the goddess who used to appear on the old British penny, is one familiar example of an anima figure. The intricately carved figureheads that used to grace the bows of sailing ships are another. And anima figures are characteristic expressions of patriarchal societies, of societies dominated by a kind of collective male psyche. A more contemporary example is the image of Prudence, the face of the Prudential corporation, re-envisaged in by my former employer Wolff Olins in the 1980s as a throughly modern, assertive and confident goddess. But as patriarchy releases its grip on our society, anima images as emblems of corporate endeavour have become less common. In the social and cultural sphere, however, there is no corresponding diminution of the desire to project animus/anima images outwardly: this remains the basis of every Hollywood blockbuster, of every ‘popular’ novel, of every ‘serious’ love.

The remedy for our romanticism, Johnson tells us, is to realise that we are mixing levels. Our romantic longings properly belong to our inner world. Expressed in that world, they lead to psychic health and integration. Turned outwardly, they create a kind of hell for us as we try to live up to — or, rather, expect others to live up to — their impossible expectations. And for as long as we are under the spell of romantic love, we are incapable of human love: the everyday appreciation of each other that makes for enduring, realistic relationships.

This extraversion, this turning outwards, is at the root of many of our contemporary difficulties. Modern humanity is in denial of its inner world. Everything is sought outwardly. Yet the urges that drive us towards inner completion and fulfilment will not go away. Unrecognised for what they are, they are attributed — and directed — towards things that cannot satisfy them.

A similarly misplaced impulse, it seems to me, is that of belonging. Like romantic love, which appeared in the West only recently in human history (around the twelfth century, with the troubadors and their message of courtly love), belonging is also a comparatively late phenomenon. Our remote ancestors belonged, it is true, to some kind of tribe or grouping. But their belonging wasn’t driven by the kind of compulsive need we see in contemporary societies. And, interestingly, their words for themselves (some of which remain in modern languages) generally meant 'people' or 'folk' — they belonged to humanity, as they knew of it, rather than to a self-consciously differentiated part of it. They had no desire to belong because, simply by virtue of being born into the group, everybody already belonged. The same remained true as we entered the mediaeval period. Here everybody belonged to someone else: the peasant to the feudal lord, the lord to the king, the king to God... No choice was involved with any of this belonging, nor was there any thinkable alternative, so nobody hungered after it.

In recent history, however, these structures of ‘natural’ belonging and ownership have disappeared. In their place, we have seen the emergence of wholly new, arbitrary kinds of belonging, such as nationalism. And alienated from traditional patterns of connection, we now project our sense of belonging onto elective constructs: things that we choose to identify with, like political parties, subcultures, brands. There is a hunger to belong. But as with romantic love, structures of belonging seem impotent to satisfy it. We want too much intensity from our belonging: more than our organisations are capable of providing.

It’s this demand for intensity — and its impossibility of fulfilment — that provides the clue to what is going on here. The only thing that can meet our desire for belonging is OurSelf, the totality of who we are. But we are not in touch with this Self, are only conscious of being outward-looking egos. And like romantic love, outward ‘belonging’ is a disaster zone, a recipe for tension and dissatisfaction in all of the situations in which we join with others. The outer world requires something calmer, more allowing, more grounded: a means of associating together without unrealistic expectations, and without the blame and dissatisfaction that comes from their inevitable disappointment. Our inner world, on the other hand — the place where such intensity is not only appropriate, but necessary — languishes for want of any attention at all.

The next time you hear the story of a suicide bomber, consider this. The problem may not be that he devoted himself to a toxic cause, but that rather the cause itself became toxic because — like so many causes in the modern world — it couldn’t support the intensity of belonging demanded of it. Without an understanding of what our urge to belong relates to, we will attach it to institutions that buckle under its weight. We belong truly only to OurSelves. And unlike outward causes, that realisation alone can give us the fulfilment we seek; will never fail us.

Exquisite tact

2007-10-09T12:15:00.000+01:00

Tonight, Tuesday 9th October 2007, is the 27th night of the Islamic month of Ramadan*. Which, by tradition, is the night celebrated by Muslims as The Night of Power. ‘And what will explain to thee what the Night of Power is? The Night of Power is better than a thousand months. Therein come down the angels and the spirit by God's permission, on every errand: Peace! This until the rise of Morn.’ (Qur'an 97:1-5)

The Night of Power comemorates the night on which the Qur'an was first transmitted to the Prophet Muhammad. Although there is actually some question about when this occurred, as the Prophet is reported to have forgotten which day it was, and to have said: ‘seek it on the twenty first, twenty-third, twenty-fifth, twenty-seventh or on the last night’.

Why do I mention this? Because I want to talk about a prayer that Muhammad gave to his young wife Ayesha, when she asked him for something to say on this night. And why do I want to talk about this recondite (and apparenlty off-topic) subject? Because, for me, it exemplifies a quality that we rarely see in communications these days: exquisite tact. Indeed, although I wouldn’t describe myself as a Muslim, I have long admired the prayers of the Prophet for this very quality. His prayers show the craft of communication at its apogee: simple, succinct, but revealing vast depths. And putting things in the right order, which is how his tact most clearly manifests itself.

The Prophet had beautiful manners. (Having known some of his descendants, it seems to me that these were also passed on to his family). What do I mean by manners? Not the kind of cringeing, stultified ‘Please?‘ and ‘Thank You!’ and ‘More tea, Vicar?’ that I was brought up on (although I’m sure he remembered his Ps and Qs — or, at least, his Bas and Qafs — as well as anyone else). Instead, what comes across from the accounts of his life and diction is a truly lovely consideration and affirmation of others — and of God. He clearly was a person who listened carefully, without judgment. And, particularly, without that curse of our times, of wanting to say something without hearing someone out. When he spoke, he said something that appreciated what the other person had said (in the true meaning of appreciation: to add to, to build upon, to give more than was there to start with). He also had, by all accounts, a great sense of humour. And although this doesn’t concern us here, I mention it to counter the image of him as some kind of glowering grey-beard, like many who claim to follow in his footsteps today.

This prayer was narrated by Ayesha, who long outlived her husband to become the grand old lady of early Islam, recounting many stories of his life to subsequent generations. And for those who are interested in such things, it was transmitted by the compilers of tradtions Ahmad, Ibn Majah and Tirmidhi. In English it translates something like this (with an rough transliteration of the Arabic to follow):

My God! Indeed you are forgiving
And love forgiveness
So forgive me
O Most Generous!

Allahumma! innaka ’afuwun
tuhibbul ’afwa
fa ’afuw ’aniyy
ya Kareem!

Before I go on, though, some explanation of the original is necessary. ‘Afuw does mean ‘forgive’ but there are other Arabic words which are closer to the English meaning of forgiveness. Al ’Afuw is one of the Names of God given in the Qur’an, and it means the One who obliterates without trace, who effaces or wipes away. This is therefore not about saying ‘Sorry!’ (and hoping that one’s apology will be acceptable). It is an invocation for one’s wrongdoing — by which I understand one’s heedlessness and forgetfulness of who or what one really is — to be completely eliminated. What is the difference? Well, saying Sorry! leaves one forever under the shadow of that apology — ‘conscious of one’s own sinfulness’ — as an old-fashioned Christian upbringing would have it. What is being asked for here, on the other hand, is for the trace or legacy of that heedlessness to be removed. It is like asking for a trauma to be healed, rather than asking fogiveness for actions carried out under its influence.

If you look at the transliteration, you will see that a word from the root ’a—f—w (from which Al ‘Afuw comes) occurs three times, in each of the first three lines. First as ’afuwun, forgiving, then as ’afwa, forgiveness, and finally as ’afuw ’aniyy, forgive me. The prayer can thus be seen as a play on this root (and spoken in the original the repetition gives it a rather unearthly cadence).

But to return to the main thrust of this piece. The four short lines of this prayer establish an extraordinarily tactful relationship between the invoker and the Invoked. First God is called in the most personal way: ’Allahumma, My God. Since I am less religiously and more mystically and psychologically minded, I see this not so much as a call to the ‘God out there’ as to one’s own indwelling divinity, to the ‘God in here’ (or what Jung referred to, in a more secular sounding way, as the Self).

Divinity is then recognised with the quality of forgiveness, or wiping away: ‘You are forgiving’. Like many of the Prophet’s prayers, this begins with an affirmation of the qualities of Godhead — the request, the asking for oneself, comes after establishing the Divine nature of the quality that is to be asked for. You are forgiving.

Then comes something extraordinary. Forgiveness is linked with love. And not just with any love, but with passion: hubb, from which we get the word used here, tuhibb. Thousands of Arab love songs designate the object of deeply erotic passion using another word from this root, habibi, ‘my beloved’. However, it probably sounds faintly heretical, if not ridiculous, to suggest that an erotic feeling could be implied here. If so, it is because we forget that Eros was originally Divine. The urge to bring the cosmos into being, which is described in another tradition of the Prophet Muhammad (where the first person refers to God), also uses this word: ‘I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known, so I created the creation that I might be known’.

The desire to create is thus expressed as the release of an erotic charge. But why might ‘forgiveness’ or ‘obliteration’ be the object of Divine eroticism? Again, though, there is a curious echo of our own sexual feelings, which combine a love to be known, an urge to procreate and a desire to lose ourselves. We could say that God loves obliteration, wiping away, because it is the erasure of the marks or imprints of separation, of our assertion of a separate existence, which is (at least, in a mystical sense) ‘sin’. Just as we long to efface our sense of separate existence in the petit mort of orgasm.

Having thus established the Divine nature of forgiveness, and having linked it with the energetic charge of love, only then does Muhammad petition God - through the immanent ‘God in here’, who is ‘closer to you than your Jugular vein’ (as the Qur'an has it) - for the obliteration of his ‘missing the mark’ (if I can transpose the Christian Greek hamartia into an Islamic context). The tact of this is beautifully expressed, layered and developed through the prayer. But we can also, perhaps, see how this tact is related to a profound understanding of the ‘magical’ nature of the universe; how it is necessary to invoke Divinity through a specific quality or outward expression and to energize this invocation by feeling inside onself a resonance with the Divine passion that brings the universe into being. Only then does the framing of a petition make sense.

Finally the prayer ends with the invocation of another quality, Divine Generosity or Nobility. It is worth observing here that karamat, from the same root as Al Kareem, also means ‘miracles’ in Arabic. A miracle is asked for, from the Divine generosity: the miracle of wiping away, of obliteration. But whether this petition receives an immediate or a deferred, a direct or an indirect, response, the Generosity and Nobility of the Divine (which also inheres within ourselves) is explicitly recognised and remembered.

Communications can be sublime: I think this prayer is a beautiful reminder of quite what tact and power human expressions are capable of.

* The Islamic year is based on a lunar calendar, so the dates of Ramadan vary.

Being ourselves

2007-09-25T11:01:00.000+01:00

Who am I? How do you answer this question? And what’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you try? Is it your name? "I’m James!" Is it a feeling? "I’m me, of course!" Is it your body? Your abilities? Your memories and experiences?

Identity is a fascinating subject which seems to become increasingly elusive the more we try to pin it down. We’re used, for instance, to this immediate association between our name and our sense of ourselves. But can a name ever be more than some kind of indicator, some kind of sign, for who we feel ourselves to be? We clearly are not our names. In a similar way, the other possible ‘answers’ to this question begin to unravel the more we examine them. Who is me? The best we can say about this response is that it points us towards a feeling rather than a concept: I am who I feel myself to be. But what is this ‘me feeling’? To explore that further, we need to leave behind the familiar, intellectual approach of questions and answers and delve into the realm of feelings. Something most of us are not comfortable, or confident, doing.

Then there is the physical identification. Am ‘I’ my body? The odd phrasing with which we have to frame this question, with its implied separation of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ raises doubts already. And which bit of my body? If I am unfortunate enough to lose my limbs, is my I-ness diminished? Of course not! So am I only a part of my body? A brain? A part of the brain? But then this in turn seems to contradict the sense of ourselves as a whole, integrated physical entity. As well as contradicting the lingering sense that our bodies, our genes, our experiences are perhaps not us at all.

This is not just an entertaining, ultimately futile parlour game. Identity is a critical issue in all areas of our lives, from the personal to the political, from the sexual to the spiritual, from the cultural to the commercial. Perhaps it is the issue. As individuals and as groups of people, we’re not confident in our identity. We try all sorts of ways to claim, to assert a sense of identity. And, increasingly, we get caught up in conflicts over identity.

Like Nasruddin looking for his housekey on the sidewalk — an image I find myself using more and more often — ‘because there’s more light there’, rather than in the darkness of the house where he actually lost it, I think we're looking for our identities in completely the wrong places. The feeling point is a big clue here, that the question may be in words but the answer is in feelings, but it’s not the whole story. The problem seems to be that we’re always looking for a qualifier. "Who am I?" "I am this", where this is a personal, cultural, ethnic, linguistic, religious, political, professional or social ‘identity’. Which, actually, is no more than saying: "I identify myself with this: ergo, this is who I am". Of course it is an ‘identity’ because we have already ‘identified’ with it. But it tells us nothing about the I who identifies, except perhaps that it is drawn to make that identification.

The wisest observers of human identity, I have found, have stopped short of associating the I-feeling with anything. When they inquire: "Who am I?", the answer they come back with is: "I AM". A bold, simple, complete statement of being. What is this feeling of "me"? Nothing short of the awareness of pure existence. And if I can be this, I can equally be that. In philosophical terms, this and that are accidents: outward attributes that can be swapped without prejudice to the being that presents them. Existence is the only ‘necessary’ quality we have.

I am neither of the East or the West, no boundaries exist in my breast.
My place is placeless, my trace is traceless.

Wrote Rumi nearly eight hundred years ago.

This is not to suggest that we don’t need to make defining choices. Or, indeed, that they aren’t imposed upon us. My choice to work as a communications consultant shapes the way I see the world, unconsciously as well as consciously. Had I chosen to be a lawyer, or a miner, or a bank-robber, I might see the world very differently. Likewise the accidents I didn’t have any choice about: my nationality, my ethnicity, my family and my education, for instance. The fact that we would find the same feeling answering to "Who am I?", whether we had been born into this family or another, whether we are brought up a Muslim or a Catholic, doesn’t wipe away the enormous impact these factors have on the things we identify with. We’re like a troupe of actors who have taken on roles. But then, from years of playing those roles have come to believe we are those roles. (Interestingly, the word ‘personality’, which very nicely describes this kind of outwardly conditioned sense of ourselves, derives from the Latin persona, a mask.)

Not only does "I AM" express our most fundamental sense of identity — the true identity conferred by the simple act of being — but it is also the ultimate source of all our energy, our passion. Everything we do receives its vitality from who we are. And another way of looking at this being is as pure possibilitity: it is our potential to be. Essentially, it stands apart and before (‘ontologically prior’, a philosopher might say) our particular identifications. It is that part of ourselves that could be anything, the fluidity to take on any role (even those that are inconceivable to us). It is also morally neutral: it includes as much our potential to be a serial killer as a philanthropist, a genius as much as an ‘ordinary Joe’. And even though we may live a dozen demanding roles, it remains detached from all of them.

Conversely, the more identified we become with the particular circumstances of our lives — the more we confuse I AM with I’m a... — the more we lock up this potential energy into petrified, sclerotic forms. To see this, we only have to compare the young with the old: to compare those who have fewer defining identifications behind them, and feel more unconditioned possibilities open to them, with the opposite. Of course reclaiming that frozen energy is possible to us at any time. All it takes is for us to realize "I am not this!". Look, for instance, at how much energy women reclaimed when the women's movement opened the possibility to challenge accepted gender roles.

Much of my work is concerned with helping groups of people to represent their sense of identity (in the low-energy terminology of marketing what is often described as ‘corporate branding’). And there is a simple moral to be drawn for this kind of work from the observations above. The more that a group of people try to represent themselves in terms of the roles or activities they identify with (or are identified with), the more lifeless and unengaging the results will be. It's equivalent, I would suggest, to calling someone Johnny Hairdresser or Sally Lawyer: it draws our attention immediately to the outwardness of the person, to a narrow definition of human potential in specific, limiting roles. We don't do this with individuals any more, although our surnames still contain the residues of these kinds of designations. We do do this with organisations, however, because we fear that if we don't present ourselves in terms of these specifics, we won’t project any identity. Nothing could be further from the truth, though: these kinds of identifications don’t project any real sense of identity at all, any sense of "WE ARE". Better to hint at the unconditioned potential of a group of people with an imaginative, colourful, can-be-whatever-you-want-it-to-be kind of name. And imagery to match.

No man from Porlock

2007-05-18T12:37:00.000+01:00

Over Easter, I had a fascinating dream. I was at a conference organised by the Institute for Cultural Research at which there were a number of speakers including, I recall, management guru Peter Senge, (the late) maverick biologist and cybernetician Francisco Varela, and an esteemed mentor of mine (who I find it difficult to categorize) Henri Bortoft. Yes, it was one of those highly realistic and intricately detailed dreams that, in that drowsy moment of being still half asleep and half awake, can be hard to distinguish from something that actually happened.

In the dream, I was looking through the conference programme. And on the second page was an illustrated feature that caught my attention. It was a synopsis of one of the presentations where the speaker suggested that the phenomenon of branding could be perfectly understood using the 'calculus of indications' developed by British mathematician (and also maverick) George Spencer-Brown. (Well, I did warn you that it was a very detailed dream!)

Now I should admit that when I had the dream I was, to some extent, already familiar with Spencer-Brown's work, through Henri Bortoft's magnificent book The Wholeness of Nature (although to be honest Spencer-Brown is confined, here, merely to a long end-note). I also enjoyed reading Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana's The Tree of Knowledge a few years ago, although I didn't know that Varela had also done a great deal of work extending and applying Spencer-Brown's mathematics to the life sciences. Peter Senge I'd heard of, but I had never read any of his books. For those who aren't familiar with him, he is the man credited with coining the phrase 'the learning organisation'.

Returning from Italy after Easter, I thought about what I knew of Spencer-Brown's work — which, to be honest, wasn't much — and realised that it could be applied to branding. This was something that had never previously occured to me. Not only that, but looking at it in this way revealed the whole idea of branding in a much more interesting light. But before going on to that I think we may first need a math lesson.

Spencer-Brown's calculus, as outlined in his 1969 book The Laws of Form, is interesting for a whole range of reasons. But perhaps the most unusual thing about it is that it sets out a non numerical arithmetic. What does this actually mean? Well, it allows us to make calculations of things that don't involve numbers or quantities — it is a calculus of qualities. However, it is easier to understand this from the actual doing.

Let us imagine a distinction. A distinction about what? Doesn't matter, just a distinction. If it helps, think of your school algebra. We were taught to think about x and y. "Excuse me, Sir, but what is x?" "Any number, boy!" "But what number, sir?" "Any number at all!". As with x, Spencer-Brown introduces us to a symbol which he calls the mark or cross, that represents any kind of distinction at all. Remember Genesis I?

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

That's a distinction. First there was formlessness — an undifferentiated state. And then, by introducing light, there was the distinction of 'light' and 'darkness'. Actually, in Spencer-Brown's terminology, this is more than a distinction. It is an indication because there is a value attached to the distinction: light.

The symbol Spencer-Brown uses to show a distinction is like the device we used to use to separate the dividend from the divisor in long division (didn't know that's what they were called? Neither did I, actually!). In other words the shape made up of two sides of a rectangle. And there are only two axioms in Spencer-Brown's arithmetic. The law of calling follows one distinction with another. It holds that no matter how many distinctions are made in this way, it is the same as making a single distinction. How so? Imagine the Genesis example. You go from darkness to light and back to darkness, then to light again. This must be the same as just going from darkness to light. The second axiom is called the Law of crossing and holds that when one distinction is nested inside another, it is equal to no distinction at all. This is a bit more difficult to explain (or perhaps it's just that a proper explanation is beyond my powers!). I guess it is the same as saying that one makes a distinction, then undistinguishes it again. Anyway, Spencer-Brown shows, in proper mathematical fashion, that it is a necessary proposition of this calculus.

But that's enough math! (And there are some excellent sites on Spencer-Brown on the web, if anyone is interested). On to branding. How is this similar?

The simplest answer is that branding is all about making value laden distinctions — indications. I'm going to talk about the area I know best, which is corporate branding. But in principle this applies to product and service branding too.

When we brand an organisation, what are we doing? We are distinguishing, not physically but conceptually, between what is inside that organisation's 'domain' and what is outside. What is governed by that organisation's distinctive ethos, culture and values, and what isn't. In this way, we are defining boundaries. But this is not a 'valueless' distinction — it's not just an arbitrary distinction between 'this' and 'that'. It is the distinction of something that is associated with a value. However it is important here not to confuse this value with so-called 'brand' or 'corporate' values — the value I am talking about is simply the sense in which an organisation or offer is a coherent, integral entity.

And Spencer-Brown's axioms tell us something very interesting about branding. First, that it is enough to signal only once that someone is entering the boundaries of the branded domain. Bringing this down to a perhaps trivial example, it is enough only to stamp a logo at the point of entry into this world — on the homepage of a website, at the entrance of a building or on the cover of a brochure. All subsequent repetitions are redundant — they follow the law of calling. It also follows that any organisation that brands itself twice — and some do — effectively unbrands itself. This is dictated by the law of law of crossing. Two different logos, both representing the same thing, undo each other.

Francisco Varela introduces a third axiom, which actually follows from Spencer-Brown's mathematics, which shows how distinctions can become self-referential. He uses this to illustrate the function of biological entities, and the way they preserve a sense of their own identity.

According to Varela, all autonomous systems are structurally open and functionally closed, which leads to paradoxical qualities particularly evident in higher order cybernetics... Varela's concept of biological identity contains paradoxical elements, implying that a system is open precisely because it is closed and closed because it is open. That is, biological systems retain cohesive identity because, as Prigogine and Stengers (1992) might say: they exist in far from equilibrium conditions with an exchange of matter, energy and information across open boundaries. At the same time, this identity can evolve dynamically precisely because of the system's autonomous functioning.

Needless to say, this applies equally to organisations. But it is much too big a subject to do more than mention here.

I'd also like to humbly suggest a fourth axiom, which comes not from mathematics but from my experience of branding organisations. This is that when several different indications (i.e. value laden distinctions) are nested one inside the other, they can be collapsed to two — the greatest and the smallest. This is different from the law of crossing in that each distinction indicates a subset of the one that is greater than it, rather than the same distinction. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, think of the hierarchy of any organisation. Since I work a lot with universities, I'll use a university as an example. At the top level, you have the indication that distinguishes the institution itself. Inside this, you may have a faculty. Inside the faculty, a school. Inside the school, a department. But when you take these together, the 'middlemen' can be effectively dismissed. One is dealing with a general sense of ethos, culture and values that are defined by the university brand and a specific attitude that is defined by the department. The ethos, culture and values as well as specific attitudes of faculties and schools are subsumed within these. And I'd like to propose that this axiom be called the law of subsidiarity because it demonstrates exactly that principle. How it might be mathematically proven, I leave to the mathematicians.

Musammem

2007-02-23T11:35:00.000Z

I recently attended the wedding of a friend to her Egyptian fiancee. I had not met Muhammad before, although I had heard a great deal about him. Inevitably, then, when we met for the first time he asked me what I did for a living. Since this is a more complicated question to answer than it is to ask, I replied that I was 'a designer'. He didn't know the word 'designer'. Nor could his best man, another Egyptian who had lived for some time in the UK, explain it. So I reached for Melanie's Arabic dictionary and, after a bit of searching, found what seemed to be the right word. "Ah! Musammem, musammmem..." It did the trick. "What kinds of things do you design?" Hmmm.

Like most 'foreign language' dictionaries, Melanie's was a simple word substitution one. What I mean by this is that it had an Arabic word on one side and its nearest English equivalent on the other. But as I have been learning Arabic, on and off, since I was nineteen (originally with another wonderful Egyptian, Ahmed Tewfik Ayyad) I know that there is a great deal more to a word like 'musammem' than this. Arabic, like the other Semitic languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac etc.), is based on a series of three letter - or, more accurately, three consonant - roots. So, for instance, the word 'musammem' comes from the root s-m-m (the 'mu-' at the beginning signals that we are dealing with what is called the 'de-verbal' noun form, or the noun that best expresses the concept of the verb that comes from the root). And each root has a whole range of meanings.

What is most interesting about the Arabic roots (and Arabic preserves the range of meanings better than, for instance, Hebrew, which was actually 'reconstructed' by the Arabized Jews of Spain, in the middle ages, having become more or less a 'dead' language) is that there is a distinct sense of connection between the words that make up this range of meaning. However this is more of a poetical rather than a logical connection.

Usually each root expresses a concrete meaning as well as abstract meanings which relate to it in a metaphorical way. This is true of many other languages as well, of course. In English, for instance, we can take a word like 'grasp' which means, in a concrete sense, to take with the hand, and use it in an abstract sense in an expression like 'I grasped the concept'. But Arabic has a far wider range of related meanings than English (and has them for every root). There is often an 'emblematic' noun for the root, too. With the root s-l-m, which should be familiar to most readers from the words 'Islam' (submission to God), 'Muslim' (someone who has submitted to God) and 'Salaam' (peace, or perfection), the word 'salam' means an Acacia Tree. And this acts as an emblem for the whole root, as in the custom of people who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca adorning their homes with acacia branches, or as a symbolic image in art or poetry.

Anyway, this has been a long-winded introduction to what I wanted to talk about, which is the range of meaning behind the Arabic word 'musammem', designer. Back at home, I looked the word up in my 'rooted' Arabic-English dictionary, 'Wehr-Cowan' as it is often called (after the original compiler and more recent editor). This gave the meanings for the s-m-m (really a rare two consonant root, with a doubled m) as:

samma (verb) to be or become deaf, to close, plug, cork, stopper (something, e.g. a bottle); (in the II verb form) to deafen, to make up one's mind, determine, resolve, be determined, decide, persist, to design, to plan.

samim (noun and adjective) innermost, heart; core, essence, marrow, pith; true, sincere, genuine (hence 'samim al qalb', from the bottom of the heart, wholeheartedly, most sincerely)

samimi (adjective) cordial, hearty.

asamm (adjective) deaf, hard and solid, massive (rock).

tasmeem (abstract noun) determination, resolution, decision; resolute action, tenacious pursuit (of a plan); planning, projecting, design, designing, plan, design, sketch.

musammem (adjective and noun) determined; fashion creator, designer.

What emerges from this root is a fascinating word picture. 'Design', in the Arab conception, is an activity that wells up from the heart, core or essence of a person. The designer needs to be 'true', 'sincere' and 'genuine' with respect to this inspiration, which means being deaf to the voices of others that would try to deviate it from its intention and having a determination or resolution that is as unmovable as a rock. But for those who are in harmony with the design, it is a cordial activity - it is ‘a path with heart’.

What else is there to say about design that this ancient language hasn't already beautifully expressed?

Promoting ethics

2007-02-07T12:48:00.000Z

I saw this on the ‘Design Observer' site today and was intrigued by it. Like others I had no idea that the Vatican had a code on advertising. Nor, indeed, that I would be so inclined to agree with it. Here, anyway, are their 'ten commandments' of ethical advertising from a report by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, 1997.

1. Advertisers are morally responsible for what they seek to move people to do.

2. It is morally wrong to use mainpulative. exploitative, corrupt and corrupting methods of persuasion and motivation.

3. The content of communication should be communicated honestly and properly.

4. Advertising may not deliberately seek to deceive, by what it says, what it implies or what it fails to say.

5. Abuse of advertising can violate the dignity of the human person, appealing to lust, vanity, envy and greed.

6. Advertising to children by exploiting their credulity and suggestibility offends against the dignity and rights of both children and parents.

7. Advertising that reduces human progress to acquiring material goods and cultivating a lavish lifestyle is harmful to individuals and society alike.

8. Clients who commission work can create powerful inducements to unethical behaviour.

9. Political advertising is an appropriate area for regulation: how much money mat be spent, how and from whom money may be raised.

10. Advertisers should undertake to repair the harm done by advertising.

These principles raise some important questions for me, though. For instance, if advertisers are to be held ‘morally responsible for what they seek to move people to do’, where exactly does that responsibility lie? With the client, for sanctioning the advertising? With the directors of the advertising agency, as the people legally responsible? With the creatives, who made that advert? Or shared (equally, or in varying amounts) between everybody involved, from the commissioners who paid for it through to the shopkeepers who stocked the product on their shelves? If anything is to change in the way advertising is done, somebody needs to have ‘the buck stops here’ on their desk - to actively take that responsibility. Otherwise this moral responsibility is simply going to disintegrate in ‘kitchen fitter’ syndrome: "No, mate, it's the electrician's job" "That's plumbing, that is!" "Blame the cabinet maker, it’s the doors what won’t fit" "I’m only the plasterer, me...” "This is John Doe Design. Currently nobody is available. If you want to leave a message, please speak after the tone..."

And I like the way the Vatican puts the emphasis on 'moral' responsibility in these protocols – rather than arguing in favour of regulation or legislation (except in the case of political advertising, which most people would prefer to see banned in any case!) But there are lots of words here with ambiguous, if not totally slippery, meanings. What constitutes ‘manipulative’, 'exploitative’, ‘corrupt’ and ‘corrupting’ methods – and how do these differ from more innocent sounding ‘persuasion'? I have my own ideas, but these words will need a much tighter kind of definition if anybody is actually going to be able to make this distinction. In fact, I think it will call for a totally different attitude to communicating, if we are to really get away from the kind of mental ju-jitsu that uses the ‘weight’ of the consumer against them. Whether this is what is meant here by communicating ‘honestly and properly' isn’t clear.

Finally, I'm curious to know how the authors see advertisers ‘repairing the harm done by advertising’ (and this prompts the mischievous thought that perhaps the Vatican ought to be asked to repair the harm done by religion). Indeed this is by no means a straightforward issue. What exaclty is the harm done by advertising? Should advertising be held responsible for the rise of consumerism in our societies, with all the ills associated with it? Again, my earlier question applies. Which 'advertisers' should have to do this? Those who make the adverts, or those who pay for them? And how ‘repair’ the damage? By footing the bill, like the tobacco companies have been made to do in the US, or through some kind of ‘community service’ where they are obliged to produce a certain number, or proportion, of pro bono advertisements for good causes (to be selected by who? The Catholic Church?)

I'm in no doubt that advertising can do, and does, quite a lot of harm. If we look at a whole raft of social concerns, from climate change through to childhood obesity, we can see how irresponsible advertising has made the situation much worse than it might otherwise have been. But consumers should equally share this responsibility. Advertising asks, but it cannot demand. By accepting and acting on the message – which we do because it appeals to what we already want to do – we make the choices that cause the harm.

Maybe ‘the buck stops here’ should be stamped on every banknote and credit card?

Communication as Giving

2006-12-05T11:43:00.000Z

Over the last few months Mark Walter has written an extraordinary series of posts for his blog eternal awareness on the subject of The Art of Giving. These posts offer deep and unexpected insights into the nature of a process that affects almost everything we do. They have certainly helped me to understand why some activities become a virtuous circle of increasing returns while others (which may not appear all that different) peter out into oblivion. I would strongly urge anyone who isn’t familiar with Mark’s writing to take a look.

The Art of Giving series has also prompted me to think about how the process of communication might be similar to giving, and about how we might usefully apply these insights to make it more effective. But before I go on, I should first summarise one of Mark’s key points, which is about the relationship between the four principles of giving: respect, appreciation, gratitude and value.

As I understand these, respect is having a correct attitude towards the source of the thing one is giving. If we were talking about giving money, respect might be directed towards one’s livelihood or towards those from whom one is raising funds.

The next principle, appreciation, is concerned with the value one adds to what one has to give. In this case, it might be as simple as deciding where the funds could be most effectively used. On a much bigger scale, for instance in a charitable organisation, it might be the management of the process of giving: having representatives on the ground, mechanisms in place to facilitate distribution, checks and balances to avoid wastage and loss.

The third principle, gratitude, is less familiar to us. Yet this is the one that makes the crucial difference between whether the giving prospers or goes to ground. This is about returning a tithe of what is given to the source. If we go back to the example of a charitable organisation, this might be about investing in the donors – making them feel involved and valued, providing feedback, etc. (However, this is where the example also shows its limitations, because the circle of fundraising, distribution and involvement I've described confines the process to flow of finance - while The Art of Giving challenges us to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of ‘source’).

The fourth principle, value is not another stage but describes the intention of the process, the increase and sharing of value.

Perhaps another example will allow us to look at how giving can work with intangible value. Imagine a counsellor with a client. The first thing the counsellor does is to listen, and this is respect. The more the counsellor can attend to the client, to give him full attention rather than allowing herself to be distracted by interpretation and judgment, the more value comes through. She then appreciates what she has heard, by using her knowledge, experience and skill to frame a question that can help the client to resolve the issues he has been describing. There is a circularity here that many people would think achieves what counselling sets out to do: you talk about your problems, I help you to understand them, you can then resolve them.

But the third principle of giving, gratitude, requires us to do more than this. The counsellor also needs to help the client become a more aware person. To understand this, we need to see that the ‘source’ of what the counsellor is able to give is her greater awareness (which may have been stimulated by her training and experience, but now stands before it). The client is caught up in his own problems. He doesn't understand them, can’t see past them. The ‘problems’ may be the pressing issue, but his inability to understand them is symptomatic of the level of his awareness. By ‘tithing’ a percentage of what she gives to the client to the task of increasing his awareness, the counsellor is lifting what is happening outside the merely transactional into what could be described as ‘service’. The client leaves counselling not just able to deal with the issues in hand, but as a more aware human being.

How is communication giving? To find an answer, we need to look beyond the usual parameters of ‘I have a message, I select an appropriate medium for it, I communicate my message’ and, instead, look at communication as a process of engagement. As an illustration, let’s take the example of an everyday marketing communication. I want to tell you about my product. First, though, I need to ‘listen’ carefully both to the product and to you. I need to understand what makes the product good and also what might interest you about it (which means understanding something about you, your needs and your interests). I then appreciate this understanding in the usual kinds of ways: with good writing, nice imagery, well crafted type, good printing (or coding, if it is communicated through the web) etc.

Where is the gratitude? This is a good question, and I believe that this is where many communications fail. Or, indeed, where some unexpectedly succeed - without anyone really understanding what their success is based on. What could it mean for a communication to ‘tithe to source’? At the most basic level, something like good writing or design, if it lifts the communication beyond being just a product promotion into something that is also beautiful, appealing, interesting in its own right, is making a tithe back to the place where the skills and experience of the communicator(s) come from. At the same time, it’s giving something back to the audience: if one is making demands on their attention, it is not enough to give them your marketing message in return. There needs to be an element of ‘something in it for me’. If the communication is funny, joyful, life-enhancing, it is increasing the amount of positive energy in the world, regardless of whether anyone is interested in what it has to say.

But this isn't going that far back ‘upstream’ (even though many marketeers are resistant to giving away even this much). The 'source' of communication is much deeper. It comes from the place that mystics describe as the Logos, the coming into being of our world as language, as ‘words’, as meanings that are comprehensible and distinct. To mouth a sentiment which might seem a bit rich for some readers, communication has a Divine source. ‘In the beginning was The Word...’, and all that. How do we return a part of the communication to that Source? Not necessarily by smothering our promotional materials with hymns and prayers (although it is interesting to note that this is exactly what happens in some cultures, for instance in the almost obligatory ‘786’ that sits above the signs of many Indian Restaurants, which refers to the Islamic invocation ‘In the Name of God, the most Compassionate, the most Merciful’).

Tithing to Source in this sense doesn't have to be so explicit, or so overwhelming. When a communication is conceived and executed in a state of ‘presence’ – if the designer has made a conscious intention to create it in a state of heightened awareness and ‘rememberance’ of her or his own Higher Self – it will convey some of this quality. How? Through the way that the elements are composed, which will result in a harmony in their relationships and proportions. And through the intangible ‘energy’ that inheres, mysteriously, in words and images. In this case only the intention needs to be conscious: the way in which these things are achieved will flow, effortlessly, from the supra-conscious being of the designer.

The Art of Giving can enable our communications to bridge between the essence of what human beings are and the mundane, everyday activities we involve ourselves in, without becoming portentous and obscure. All work has this potential. The ‘tithing’ that gratitude requires doesn't demand total devotion, only a hint, a ‘whiff’ of something else. And, as I've said so many times before, ‘something that is created with love and delight communicates that love and delight, but something that is created with other qualities communicates those qualities’. The engravings that William Blake made for Joseph Flaxman’s ceramics catalogues came, unmistakably, from the hand that penned ‘To see a world in a grain of Sand. And a heaven in a wild flower...’ But they sold pots.

Makeover madness?

2006-11-22T12:04:00.000Z

As you can see, Transforming Communication has had its first makeover! This is a response to my beloved Maria insisting that my grey website was saying something about me! And there is more than a grain of truth to this. When I first thought about what I wanted to do with the site, it was to open doors to all kinds of new ideas, approaches, energies – to bring exuberance and vitality into the often stale and staid way we communicate. And arguably there is still nothing like enough exuberance and vitality in the site design. But it is a start!

Anyway, introducing the new look gives me an opportunity to say something about a subject that particularly fascinates me: makeovers. And hardly anyone can have failed to notice that the last few years have been makeover crazy. Popular TV shows, books, magazines, almost every kind of media you can imagine have been given over to makeovers. Celebrity makeovers. Home makeovers. Business makeovers. Fashion makeovers. Even social skills makeovers. What is happening here?

For my part, I think the makeover phenomenon is connected with a development that I described in The end of Leadership. For millennia we have been locked into patterns of liking and disliking, of tastes and preferences, that have reflected the societies around us. We adopted these because they were the price of approval. And for most of this time the idea of dissent was unthinkable. The number of people who questioned whether they should worship a certain god, obey a certain ruler, conform to certain mores, dress a particular way, eat this or that food, was tiny. ‘Freethinker’ was synonymous with ‘threatening, suspect, dangerous‘.

In fact, we can chart the rise of freethinking from its first emergence in the Classical era (witness Socrates’ rejection of the gods) through its effective disappearance in the Dark Ages to its re-emergence in the Mediaeval stirrings of conscience that gave rise to such things as the Protestant Reformation, the demand for political representation and the emergence of various sub-cultures. And it is the relationship of freethinking to sub-cultures that I am most interested in discussing here.

Subcultures emerge when there is a shift in the power balance of a society. The ‘host’ culture must first loosen its grip: it must become less prescriptive, more tolerant, unobtrusive. What usually produces this is a diminution of the general sense of threat, for instance when peace and prosperity and abundance relax the brooding anxiety that simmers under the surface of most people, most of the time. Smaller groups of people thus find that they can establish their own norms and modes, free from the surveillance and interference of the people around them. Indeed, some sub-cultures come into existence just to put the anxiety and intrusion back into people's lives, appealing most to those who feel uncomfortable without the ‘structure’ they were used to. Other sub-cultures arise, however, because greater freedom allows for the open expression of ideas and practices that had previously been supressed. Then there are subcultures of style and fashion that reflect the desire of (usually younger) people to define themselves in contrast to others – to create a sense of identity without necessarily challenging fundamental beliefs and assumptions. And, of course, there are many other kinds of sub-cultures as well.

Some commentators saw the nineties, which were really the beginning of the makeover era, as bringing a new ‘tribalism’, discerning new sub-cultures in all sorts of different areas from surfing to street-gangs. What seemed to be different about these ‘tribes’, compared with the youth cultures that had been with us for the last forty years or so, was their fluidity, spontaneity and multiplicity. Unlike, for instance, more established groups of Mods, Hippies or Goths, these sub-cultures tended to emerge, mutate, and disappear, quickly. Marketeers who saw them as an opportunity were frustrated by how elusive, and how resistant, they could be towards traditional techniques of promotion. And so we saw the development of such things as ‘viral marketing’ in the attempt to reach them, provoking further transformations as the members sought to avoid assimilation into the mainstream.

At the same time as this was happening, the makeover phenomenon was beginning. I believe that the two are closely linked, too – although perhaps not in an obvious way. The new tribalism represented an evolution of youth culture where the desire to be part of a big group had already become associated with an undesirable degree of conformity. The need for the approval of peers was still there, but the groups were becoming smaller, more fragmented, looser in their requirements. New technologies, such as the Internet, were also making it possible for them to be virtual. It no longer mattered if nobody in your neighbourhood dressed like you, thought like you, behaved like you. You could now sit up all night connecting with like-minded people all over the globe.

The natural consequence of this fragmentation (and the reason I believe the tribal phenomenon was only a transitional stage) is that, at a certain point, one realizes one can be in a ‘tribe of one’. At this point even peer approval changes, because what we have in common with others is not our similarity but our difference. And as conformity ceases to be an issue, newer and far more radical possibilites emerge. One of these is that the process of reinvention which, in the past, was a rite of passage for joining a subculture (and a highly consequential act), becomes a triviality. Without fear of disapproval, and with a myriad of options and role models available to us, we at last feel free to transform aspects of our life with impunity. Fancy trying Mongolian food? A tattoo? Painting your front room purple? Why not? Tomorrow you might change your mind, and then you can try something else. And it’s possible to see now that this first generation of makeovers was itself only tentative, concerned with relatively superficial aspects of life. We are already pushing the envelope of reinvention much further – into work, sexuality, spirituality even.

It’s wrong, I think, to see the makeover phenomenon merely as entertainment. In fact a huge revolution is sweeping through our societies, challenging mores that have long been obsolete. Like the Berlin Wall (which seems to be a potent symbol for what is happening) we are realizing that the disapproval we were previously afraid to take on hasn't had any real authority for a long time. And is offering little or no resistance to us as we tear down conventional morality. Having tasted this freedom, having enjoyed the many possibilities that are now available and, above all, having experienced what it means to become ‘the author of the law you follow’, humanity may never be the same again.

The primacy of feeling

2006-11-13T11:32:00.000Z

I was listening the other day to a philosophical discussion in which somebody raised the old objection that the claims of religion cannot be verified. I'm not very interested in this kind of discussion, so my attention wandered elsewhere. And I was struck by the thought that, actually, we live in a time where almost nothing lends itself to verification. Forget religion. Will any of us ever know for sure who killed John Kennedy or Princess Diana? Or if Saddam Hussein really had weapons of mass destruction? Or whether Neil Armstrong genuinely stepped onto the Moon?

It's not that I want to dwell on conspiracy theories — far from it. Because it occurred to me that almost any news story is unverifiable for us. Did Sven really have that affair? Jade that punch-out? Tony and Gordon that famous falling out? Everything we are told about these events is hearsay, from people who have a vested interest in elaborating, embroidering and sometimes plain distorting. Most are contested. And there is precious little concrete evidence in the public domain.

When we come to Science, this is no less true. We are told, for instance, that if you bring together a critical mass of fissile Uranium, a nuclear reaction will take place. Advocates of Scientific Rationalism — die-hard materialists like Richard Dawkins — assure us that this is ‘an established fact’. But I have no more possibility of testing its supposed replicability than I have of establishing the veracity of the virgin birth of Christ (or, for that matter, of finding out who has been in Robbie Williams’ bed). Sure, I can learn the theory. I might even be allowed to witness the detonation of a nuclear device (although this lies in much the same realm of unlikelihood as becoming, at 46, an astronaut or a brain surgeon). However there is no possibility that I will ever be allowed to play with masses of Uranium. Indeed, just as with the religious dogma, I am really being asked to take this ’on authority’. And at a time when many ‘authorities’ reveal themselves to be far more partial, and have far less credibility, than most of us would like.

But fortunately it’s not entirely a matter of faith. In investigating the claims of modern science, there are some tools that I can use — although these aren't quite what one expects. For instance, if I want to satisfy myself that the Copernican theory of the Earth revolving around the Sun makes more sense than the Ptolemaic theory of the Sun revolving around the Earth (and neither can be 'proved' — all we really know for sure is that the planets and Sun are in movement relative to each other), I can apply the principle of Occam's Razor. This principle, which many of us will remember from dreary schooldays, holds that one should always look for the simplest explanation. Ptolemaic astronomy, with its numerous ‘epicyles’ (adjustments to the cycles of the planets to account for their observed movements), is a much more complicated system than Copernical astronomy, with its simple rotations around the Sun. Using the razor, Copernicus’ explanation seems like the correct one. (However I should point out that until Kepler suggested that the planets have elliptical orbits, more than half a century after Copernicus’ death, the Ptolemaic version still gave the more accurate predictions).

Now the interesting thing about Occam's razor (and, like many of these things, no such principle appears in the writings of William of Occam) is that there isn’t a logical or rational justification for it. It is no more reasonable that a natural phenomenon should have a ‘simple’ explanation rather than a complicated one. It is, instead, based on a feeling for evidence. And, indeed, the fundamental principles that underpin the whole edifice of modern science are all, similarly, rooted in feelings. For instance, the ‘Scientific Method’ is based on the feeling that all natural phenomena must be repeatable and predictable. There is no reason to believe this, even if it appears to be true for some aspects of our experience. However, because the method that hangs off of this feeling gives us the power to predict and replicate complex phenomena, we rarely look at where it comes from.

At this point, let me return for a moment to William of Occam again. Because his work, most of which was concerned with logic, leads to the conclusion that the human mind can actually prove nothing. As a Franciscan, he was most concerned with how it might be possible to prove the existence of God or the immortaility of the soul. And in the end, he held, such knowledge can only come through revelation. What did he mean by ‘revelation’? An experience that produces the feeling of certainty.

In the twenty-first century, our interests may be somewhat different from those of Occam, but the same conclusions are almost inescapable. Why do we think it ulikely that people are being abducted by aliens? Or that AIDS is God’s wrath on an immoral world? Only because we feel that there are simpler explanations, and that these explanations are more likely to be true. But we are so concerned with the supposed rationality of our beliefs we don't see the primacy of feeling — how behind our whole modern way of looking at the world is a felt perception of how things must be. Ironically, even the ’rationality’ of our beliefs is itself based on a feeling — a feeling for reason.

When we can verify almost nothing of what we are told, either because we will never have access to the true facts or because we will never have access to the apparatus to put them to the test, it has become vital that we can access these feelings (and recognise them for what they are). The only rigour that can exist in an unverifiable world is the degree to which we can be true to these feelings — which are not only to do with evidence, but also with things like justice, integrity, health and purpose. And I should point out that I’m not talking about a feeling that a particular belief is ‘right’, which sensation is most often simply a conditioned response, but something much deeper and more fundamental. The feeling that there is such a thing as ‘rightness’, for instance.

Unlike beliefs, which vary enormously, these feelings are broadly consensual. And evolving. Before the Scientific Revolution, for instance, the feeling for evidence I have mentioned wasn't widespread. Before the Middle Ages, the same was true of the feeling for logic. These feelings emerged in an avant-garde, sometimes over hundreds of years, before being disseminated through humanity at large. And there are new feelings emerging in contemporary humanity, often brought into prominence through works of imagination: film, story, music. The New Spirituality, which I’ve alluded to in a previous post, is a case in point — underpinned by a feeling for the nature of human beings which challenges some of the assumptions of the former ‘scientific’ paradigm.

If we recognise the primacy of feelings, it becomes possible to see the way that they are giving rise to new ways of thinking, acting and being. Often, now, within a very short timescale.

Identity crisis

2006-11-08T12:02:00.000Z

A few months ago I was seated on a crowded commuter train opposite a group of Muslim girls who were all wearing ‘hijabs’. It turned out that they were medical students from a local teaching hospital, and they were chatting about their experiences. At a certain point the conversation turned to another girl, not present, who was only known to one of them. “Is she a Hijabi, like us?”, one of the others asked.

It was at this point that I understood something I hadn't grasped before. A hijab is no longer a garment, a way of dressing that some Muslims have traditionally adopted to meet the Qur'anic injunction that believing women should dress modestly. It is a badge of identity. Indeed, I was struck that the girl didn't ask: “Is she a Muslim?”, which would have been a more reasonable question. But no. The issue was whether she demonstrated her commitment to ‘the group’ by what she wore.

From my teens onwards, I have been fortunate to have associated with some rather remarkable people who also happened to be Muslims. From them I learned that one didn’t wear one's religion on one’s sleeve (or, given the penchant for religious people of all faiths to adopt ‘silly hats’ and other facial adorments, on one’s head). This didn’t just resonate with my very English distaste for ‘displays’. It also points to the real factor behind the need to be seen to be something: compensation. And certainly I've always felt that those who have the greatest urge to preach the ‘Word of the Lord’ are often the ones who privately have the greatest doubts and insecurities about it.

However, we live in an age of ‘Cultural Identity’ where faith very often is reduced to these kinds of trivial externals. Only this week, for instance, I saw a girl no older than seven or eight wearing a hijab. In traditional Muslim cultures pre-pubescent girls have not been expected to be veiled (and it is now widely understood that the Qur’an does not require this of any woman — it is a cultural practice, not a religious one). Why were her parents dressing her in this way? To my eye this practice is just as distasteful as sending a seven year old out dressed like a streetwalker (which, of course, also happens these days). In different ways both types of apparel sexualise children. The hijab also politicises them.

My Muslim friends held to a very sensible, ancient Sufi dictum: ‘Eat whatever food you like, but wear the normal clothes of the place in which you live’. While this might seem to be a simple, straightforward statement it is actually a surprisingly subtle and powerful principle for life. It holds that we have a free choice about what we ‘feed’ ourselves with (and to the Sufi ‘food’ is by no means confined to the products of the kitchen but includes all that nourishes us, including ‘impressions‘). But when it comes to the way we present ourselves to others (and, again, ‘clothes’ stand for all the ways we express ourselves) we should be considerate of their sensibilities. “Speak to everyone in accordance with their understanding”, as the Prophet Muhammad (the peace and blessings of God be upon him) said. One friend, herself a lineal descendant of the Prophet, managed (it seemed to me) to successfully meet the requirements of modesty and dignity by wearing jeans and a tee-shirt. So what is served by extreme statements?

If it sounds like I am being intolerant of others’ ‘cultural identity’, I am. Personally, I don’t have any time for it: in the era in which we live, it seems an entirely unnecessary and burdensome concept. Each of us already has a unique ‘identity’ which is, quite simply, the sheer fact of our individuality. We don’t need any more identity than this, let alone a group of cultural conservatives telling us what we should think, feel, believe and do. And there are no absolute standards for what makes a Muslim, a Briton or anything else: these labels have meant different things to different people, at different times. In fact societies have always been in a constant, continuous process of change, exchange and diversification. ‘Cultural identity’ is really just an expedient myth, of recent orgin, designed to control and organize people — and to highlight their supposed ‘differences’ from others. The concept is divisive, in its very core.

The demand for Cultural Identity, I believe, is driven by a craving to belong. I use the word craving because it looks much more like a pathological condition than a real requirement for human beings. We are social creatures, and as such have reasonable needs to get along with each other. But ‘belonging’ appears to be something else — a substitute and an avoidance of the kind of deep self-encounter that alone can provide a real experience of who we are. Once more, each of us already has a unique identity which is, quite simply, the sheer fact of our individuality. And this individuality can only be experienced in the present — in the Now — not in the illusory ‘collective memory’ beloved of identity theorists. However, we are often reluctant to let go of our baggage: to relinquish the secure feeling of being on the back seat of the car, with ‘parents’ taking charge of us. Some of this reluctance even goes so far as active denial, creating monstrous constructs of belonging to act as barriers to change. Witness our ‘Hijabis’. Allah wants pure hearts, girls – not wrapped faces.

Design for the New Age

2006-10-24T13:20:00.000+01:00

Whether we like it or not, the ‘New Age’ is now an unavoidable part of our lives. From the proliferation of alternative and complementary medical practitioners through to the incorporation of Eastern terms into our languages, and from the prevalence of beliefs like reincarnation and angels to the popularity of practices like meditation and martial arts, it has brought about significant changes in the ways we look at the world. Few of us haven‘t been touched by it in some way, or don‘t subscribe to some New Age idea or other.

Underlying the many different New Age philosophies and practices are some general themes. First, that humanity is going through some kind of evolutionary development, of which the adoption of these new ideas and practices is both a symptom and a driver. Second, that there is a growing convergence between the concepts of theoretical Physics and the observations of great mystics of the past. These include such foundational ideas as everything is connected, there is only energy and we create our own reality. Third, that the diversity of the world’s religious expressions masks a fundamental unity. And that the time has come to go beyond the conventional aspects of religious practice to the spontaneous spiritual experience where this unity resides.

These themes have proved to have extraordinary attraction, dynamism and resilience. But curiously one of the areas that has so far been most resistant to their penetration is design. Curious, because designers frequently define themselves in terms of a radical, questioning and playful creativity that both challenges the status quo and is open to a wide, eclectic range of influences. And designers of the early ‘modern’ period were often very interested in the precursors of today’s New Age ideas — the original Bauhaus pioneers in Theosophy, for example, or architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the Russian mystic George Gurdjieff. However, as the twentieth century progressed, design disciplines from architecture to graphics increasingly began to identify themselves with a skeptical secularism. Looking at design at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it seems primarily concerned with ‘outward show’, ‘nice things’ and ‘material culture’.

Contemporary designers still often see themselves as being at the cutting edge of society, inaugurating fashions and surfing the zeitgeist. In reality, however, they have been largely blind to the role the New Age has played in shaping this zeitgeist. So while recent films like What the Bleep..., as well as authors like James Redfield and Paolo Coelho, have stimulated an unprecedented explosion of popular interest in New Age ideas, writings by and about designers give no hint that these have had any influence on design whatsoever. Indeed, in contrast to what has been happening in the rest of the world, the theoretical bases of design have tended in recent years to look backwards rather than forwards for their inspiration. While the rest of the population were discovering how to balance their chakras and live in the now, design students were taught obscure Marxist and post-Marxist French philosophers. And on both the theoretical and the practical sides, there has been little on offer for designers drawn to New Age ideas.

But what would design be like if it did embrace the New Age? Many of the central themes of New Age philosophies and practices have considerable relevance — and resonance — for design. And there may be answers here for how designers can find a positive and productive role for themselves in the emerging era.

A dark place

2006-10-17T16:52:00.000+01:00

The recent controversy over ‘size zero’ models raises some fascinating and disturbing questions. How has the fashion industry got itself into such an unhappy situation? Why is it that it can’t seem to get out of it? And how come this is so far removed from everyone’s possible ‘best interests’, from shareholders to consumers?

Size zero is not about business, even of the most cynical kind. Indeed the average British woman’s dress size has gone up over the last few years to 14, while these skeletal waifs are only 4s in our measurements. Nobody wears size 4. Customers aren’t queueing up to buy such tiny clothes, they are starving themselves to fit into them. Nor is there anything alluring about what has been called ‘heroin chic’. Many years ago the novelist Anthony Burgess described a relationship he had with a model as ‘like making love to a bicycle’. And this girl was positively ample by today’s standards! For every reason one can imagine, from the evolutionary to the aesthetic, men are not attracted to emaciated women. Sex with bones is no fun.

But it is not the models who are responsible. These girls are the victims. Victims of what, though? Some kind of collectively traumatic misogynistic fixation that seems to have infected the whole industry, but most especially the designers, stylists and photographers who are responsible for the look. There are some deeply disturbed people at the top of the fashion industry, too — I know, because a friend works for one of them. His trail of smashed up hotel rooms and drug-frenzied rages makes even Keith Moon look like Father Christmas.

And the key point about size zero is that it is about abuse. Most girls are already bigger than this by the time they turn ten, so there is nothing ‘natural’ about someone in their twenties or thirties having these measurements. The only zeros we might otherwise see are women suffering from acute, anorexic malnutrition or in the advanced stages of opiate addiction. This is a really bleak, distressing reference group. What appeal could it have for anyone? The same morbid fascination, I would like to suggest, that we see with self-harmers and cutting (and how much longer will it be, I wonder, before razor scarred arms become the next catwalk accoutrement?) It is the lure of the dark side: demonic, dangerous, destructive. A frisson from the malevolent forces of chaos and disorder.

What does the fashion industry say in support of size zero? Opposition to the proposed bans focuses around the argument of ‘creative freedom’, which in itself raises interesting questions. How free are the designers? Given that this look has obsessed fashionistas since the late 1980s, it appears more likely that they are in the grip of something that is controlling them — not the other way around. And some comments from the industry even suggest a sigh of relief that someone else is taking charge of this situation. Fashion is in a thrash. It has not been able to pull itself out of this downward spiral, and the consequences have become more and more destructive. We should remember that what made the debate recently hit the headlines again was the death of 22 year old Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos, effectively of starvation. Style has become a killer.

I see analogies here with tendencies in other ‘creative’ disciplines. Rap music, for instance, has equally been unable to shake off its dark side — its fascination with violence and criminality. Some commentators celebrate this as the authentic voice of the ghetto, but the problem is that it reinforces exactly those tendencies that make the world’s ghettoes such bleak and despairing places: gang culture, gun fetishism, the promotion of excessive drug funded lifestyles, prostitution. Even graphic design hasn’t been innocent. Its flirtation with chaos, fragmentation, disorder — ‘grunge’ — that began in earnest at the end of the 1980s is still with us. Darkness doesn’t release its victims easily.

I remember being shown some student work at a Design History conference in the early 1990s. This had come out of the newly integrated South Africa and was characterised by the most surprising positivity and optimism: mandala like forms, images of holism and unity, vitality and ‘lightness’. It made an extraordinary contrast with the work we were used to seeing from colleges in Britain and the United States. The teacher whose students had produced this work commented that, after so many years of apartheid, none of them could bear to contemplate the failure of the country’s multi-racial experiment.

The more I’ve gone on in this business, the more convinced I become that design doesn’t just reflect the unease of a society — it amplifies and broadcasts it too. The analogy I would draw is with trauma. We don’t just suffer traumas, perhaps as children, living quietly and patiently with them ever after. Instead, as time goes by, they begin to influence more and more of our behaviour. In the worst cases, they take control of this behaviour totally, driving us to traumatise others. Investigate an abuser and you will find someone who was abused. The hurt, which throbs away in the backround, is reactivated at times of vulnerability. Only heightened awareness and conscious restraint stops it.

There is also a background pattern of trauma, where individual traumas become aggregated into collective forces, creating a climate of violence and abuse. This can be seen very clearly in some of the communities of the Near East whose identities and memories have become contaminated by hatred and persecution. There can be a kind of exultation in this, too — a twisted enjoyment which stops people from standing up to it. This is what I believe has happened in the fashion industry.

Creative people have a responsibility. Whatever ‘wavelength’ we tune into, we also transmit. It may not be cool to transmit positivity and optimism and awareness and integrity, but it is necessary. More necessary than ever before, in fact. As I have said many times before: something that is created with love and delight communicates love and delight, while something that is created with other qualities communicates those qualities. Designing an artefact to shock or offend others is no different from telling them to fuck off. It adds, pointlessly, to the weight of insult and hurt in the world. And rips through the fabric of our aesthetic faculties in the same way as a knife through body tissue. We need to stop it. Now.

Would fashion really be so terrible if it stopped sexualising infants and celebrating abuse and designed gorgeous, flattering, comfortable clothes for healthy women — those whose body measurements and statistics reflect the ideals of wellbeing as well as the make-up of the population at large?

And statistics...

2006-10-04T09:05:00.000+01:00

There’s something that fascinates and perplexes me, in equal measure. Over the last ten years I've spoken at seminars for the company with which I do most of my work. Every few weeks 30 people from prospective client organisations are invited to come to listen to our ideas and enjoy a nice breakfast. It's an effective form of marketing. But the thing I find so intriguing is that, almost without exception, there is a consistent percentage who drop out. They’ve responded to a letter to say they would like to come. They’ve been phoned up the day before and confirmed they’ll be there. And then they don’t show up.

The extraordinary thing – to my mind, anyway – is that if you speak to any of them afterwards, each has a perfectly plausible and quite unique excuse: "my assistant called in sick”, “I was summoned to an urgent meeting”, ”the dog ran off”. But the percentage of ‘no shows’ rarely varies. Four or five people simply will not be there on the day.

This seems to be a fairly universal problem, and businesses that are constantly juggling their capacity – like airlines or hotels – make allowances for it. Most of us have had the experience of checking-in for a flight, only to find it was over-booked. It doesn’t often happen but every now and then something surprising occurs and everybody shows up. (The day it happened to us at the seminar I remember well because I didn’t get anything to eat!)

Because we are operating on a small enough scale I have had an opportunity to see this from two quite different perspectives. One of them is the individual: "the alarm clock didn’t go off". The other is, for want of a better word, the statistical: about fifteen percent won’t be there. And the thing is that the two perspectives aren’t congruent. It’s not as if people are lying and really they have been moved by some impersonal force that dictates human behaviour at a group level. But equally it is such a consistent phenomenon that we can generally rely on it for filling the room and ordering meals.

It strikes me that this is one of the big issues that faces marketing. There are patterns of behaviour that can be discerned from looking at human behaviour en masse and it is very tempting to do so. Predictions can be made on this basis, strategies developed, decisions implemented. But looking only at the statistical picture blinds us to what is really going on. These meta-patterns are made up of many individual events, each of which are quite different. Statistics give us an overview of the ‘what’ of human behaviour but they cannot give any insight into the ‘why’. The forces that are driving trends are not impersonal and collective, but personal and individual. On the other hand, looking at particular cases, which some of the newer marketing practices like ethnography try to explore, can give us the individual ‘whys’ but conceal the bigger picture.

Many years ago a friend’s dad, who understood more about physics than we did, explained that in a boiling kettle there are tiny particles of ice. What appears to be a homogenous mass of water at 100°C is in fact made up of molecules with all sorts of different energy states. It only seems like the whole is boiling because the average of those billions of individual micro-states is at boiling point. It might even be that not a single molecule is at exactly 100°C. Looking at the aggregated picture enables us to use this phenomenon – and make a cup of coffee. But focusing on the detail enables us to understand how this is actually happening. And to realise that just because the whole appears to be boiling it doesn’t mean that each molecule must be boiling too.

Thus far I haven’t really said anything that isn’t already widely understood. But what I would like to add is that we need to find effective ways of looking at phenomena that allow us to integrate the two perspectives better. So, for instance, when we look at the statistical level to remember that we are looking at a diverse community of events, challenging the temptation to think that everybody is doing the same thing for the same reason. And when we drop down to look at the individual events, to remember that they combine to reveal a greater pattern. Bearing in mind that any sense we have of individual behaviour is equally an aggregate of shifting desires, moods, priorities – of different people inhabiting the same body.

The American Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf used a metaphor about language that I've always loved, likening it to a pattern that – as one steps back from it – reveals further patterns that emerge at different scales. We have individual letters that combine to form words, words to sentences that are semantically more than the meaning of the individual words, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to chapters, chapters to books and so on. Everything is really of this kind. What’s important is not to get stuck at any one level but to be able to move backwards and forwards between them, appreciating what each can show us.

Diagnosed with Consumption

2006-09-30T10:39:00.000+01:00

For a long time I’ve believed that our choice of words conditions the way we see things (in linguistics this is referred to as the ‘Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis'). For example, I dislike the use of the word ‘patient’ in the health service. It implies that someone has no role in understanding and resolving their health issues, which contradicts everything we now know about the importance of a positive, active attitude towards our own healing. It’s a dependency word. And, indeed, this is how people have often been treated – I remember once waiting on a surgical ward to see the consultant and his group of acolytes, ordered by the Sister to keep quiet and not say anything! Needless to say, I saw this as a provocation rather than an instruction.

One of the words I'm struggling with at the moment is ‘consumer’. Not only has it become a pejorative, thanks to the Marxist critique of ‘consumer fetishism’ (which has somehow found its way into contemporary media theories), but it is also, frankly, inaccurate. I might ‘consume’ a cappucino – hardly the most fetishistic act, I have to say – but I certainly don’t consume a microwave oven, a holiday or an insurance policy. And whilst I’m in ranting mood, I ought to add that I’m tired of the sneering way it is used by theorists who are just as likely to be down at John Lewis on a Saturday morning as I am.

In Freudian terms ‘consumption’ is an oral word and I'm not going to deny that there aren’t oral aspects of our behaviour as ‘consumers’. The desire to surround oneself with lots of stuff is often, like compulsive eating, driven by the need to fill some kind of hole inside ourselves. And the kind of anxiety that some people try to assuage with compulsive spending can be similar to the feeling of hunger. But this is pathological, and it doesn’t help that the term we use to describe a universal and unavoidable feature of modern life has these kinds of pathological overtones. Most of us are not driven to ‘consume’. We do so because that’s the way the world works.

So I think the time has come to ditch consumer, consumption, consumerism and find something altogether more appropriate. Another word that includes all of the activities in which we spend our money, as well as others that don’t involve financial transactions at all. In fact the transactional aspect is a bit of a red-herring here, because we are as much ‘consumers’ of intangibles like ideas, emotions and experiences as we are of stuff that we have to pay for. In most significant aspects, for instance, the marketing of politics is the same as the marketing of soap powder. The difference is that nobody swipes our plastic and we don’t walk away with something in a carrier bag.

After considering this matter for a while, the word I would like to suggest in place of consumer is respondent. It’s not offered as an exact equivalent, because I’m more concerned with drawing attention to the phenomenon of offer and take up, which is fundamentally about communications. This offer could be as straightforward as a retailer promoting a product, or as abstract as an author presenting an idea. And I like the word respondent to describe someone having an interested reaction because it implies an active stance. We respond to something because it moves us, and our response may be in any number of different ways. It suggests involvement as well as choice, dignifying rather than belittling the person so described.

The end of Leadership

2006-09-29T12:47:00.000+01:00

In recent years ‘leadership’ has become a boom industry in management circles, resulting in a deluge of programmes, books, seminars and gurus. Everybody aspires to be a leader these days, it seems. Do a google search on ‘leadership’ and it will return 270,000,000 entries. Yes, that's right, a mind-boggling two hundred and seventy million web pages that cater to this demand. By my reckoning, that is one entry per twenty four people on the earth. (Based on a global population of 6,530,000,000 in August 2006).

But what about the followers? Searching ‘followership’ on google gives a mere 210,000 entries. If we use the respective numbers of pages as an indication of the appetite to lead or follow, that results in an equally astonishing one follower for every 1,286 would-be leaders! Surely something’s got to be wrong here? If everybody wants to be a chief, who’s going to be the indians? And that, to my mind, is the really noteworthy thing about this. Not the desire to be in control, respected, directing things. But the collapse of any interest in being led.

We can see this in the whole phenomenon of celebrity. Vast amounts of attention is given by the world's media to various kinds of ‘celebrities’, most of whom, frankly, are non-entities. People are interested in them not because they believe in them, admire them, are prepared to take their stand behind them, but because they want what the celebrities have got. We don’t want our celebrities put on a pedestal, like the heroes of yesteryear (Scott of the Antarctic, Lawrence of Arabia, Florence Nightingale), out of reach of our prosaic aspirations. We wan't them pulled down to our level, or below. Revealed to be rude, lying, coke-snorting love-rats. It's the same, albeit in a blander grey-suited kind of way, with the leadership circus.

So what’s happening with human beings? Actually, something very interesting and extremely positive. We are coming quite rapidly to a point in our cultural evolution where the influence of external sources of authority is collapsing. The idea that who we are is what other people tell us – our ‘elders and betters’ – is running out of steam. Increasingly who we are is who we define ourselves to be. It’s a gesture that comes from the inside out, rather than from the outside in (as has been the case through most of human history).

In fact this process started many centuries ago and has merely been accelerating in recent decades. We can easily trace it as far back as the Protestand Reformation in Europe, where the central issue was the right to define one’s beliefs for oneself, privately and – most importantly – according to one’s own conscience. That word conscience, although it seems a little quaint and old-fashioned today, is the key here. Because what it really means is not a narrowly conditioned moral sense, a feeling of ‘must’ and ‘ought’ and ‘should’ (which are always the internalised voices of external parental figures) but the expression of something beyond this, of who we really are as unique individuals.

The Reformation was only one of the first stirrings of this, though. When we look back, we see the early Protestants as still fixated on authority and conformity – although this is clearly not how they saw themselves. But religious reform quickly led into political reform, witnessed by the three great revolutions of the Western world (where most of these developments have first taken place): the English, the American and the French. These first mooted the ideas of political self-determination, that people were equal and that they had the right to shape their own affairs. Again, though, it has taken years to shake off the hedges and assumptions that originally accompanied these changes: to recognise, for instance, that women had as much right to a place in the national polity as men or that the franchise belonged as much to uneducated labourers as to the property owning classes.

The revolutions of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries extended this idea of the ‘freedom of conscience’ first into the workplace (with the organisation of labour) and eventually into the home (with the women’s movement). But this has often been seen, frequently in Marxist terms, as a purely political development (as the famous feminist slogan ‘the personal is the political’ indicates). The two big changes at the end of the twentieth century, the empowerment of consumers and the freedom of information (particularly through the Internet), are thus not usually recognised as being part of the same evolutionary process.

All of these developments, however, have had the effect of increasingly transferring the locus of power and authority from others to ourselves. Even within the family, we’ve witnessed a huge shift in the relationship between parents and children: within living memory parents have gone from being patriarchs and matriarchs, whose word was law, to a kind of big sister/big brother armed at best with the ability to persuade. Looking ahead, it’s not difficult to forsee a time when the kinds of radical educational experiments carried out by A.S. Neill and Homer Lane, where children take control of the running of their school, become mainstream thinking. We’re not quite ready for that yet, but it may only be a couple of decades away.

It can be hard to recognise quite how much, or how fast, we have changed. But look back to the 1950s and it is clear that then most people’s beliefs, attitudes and expectations depended crucially on those around them: their parents, their teachers, their peers and the society at large. To challenge the environment one grew up in was still a rare – and hugely consequential – act. The forces that kept behaviour in check: disapproval and shame, were still potent. Compare that with the situation now, where we routinely reinvent ourselves and where few people feel any obligation to follow the tastes or beliefs even of their friends, let alone of their parents. These days we challenge our doctors, break the law when we feel it shouldn’t apply to us and laugh at those who assume they can tell us what to do. ‘Do you know who I am!’ ‘Am I bothered?’

And this is the bald fact about ‘Leadership’: there are no followers any more, nobody who wants to be led. Only those of us who, through inertia or low self esteem, don’t feel able to take control of our own lives, of our own destinies. Leadership sells because we all feel able to be in the driving seat, but the only people we are going to be driving are ourselves. And this is where the Leadership industry needs to recognise what is happening and change direction – from teaching some kind of updated Public School vision of the ‘Jolly Good Chap’ to showing people how to lead themselves. Of course, this requires an understanding of which part of us should be leading (which is another subject altogether).

In the world we are rapidly entering, working with others will be a quite different proposition from what it used to be. Some of us have already tasted this and can share our experiences with those who haven’t. Basically, it means understanding how to work together: the lively harmony of jazz musicians jamming, not the formal ‘command and control’ of conductor and orchestra. It means learning to recognise how others’ strengths complement ours, and how we complement them. And how to offset our weaknesses against each other.

Professor Arthur Deikman called this new paradigm ‘the eye level world’ (in his book The Wrong Way Home). At the end of the book he gives this particularly beautiful and poignant description:

‘The eye-level world is the perspective that arises when the parents in the sky disappear and their images superimposed on other people dissolve and vanish. As you look around, no one towers above you, everyone looks back at the same human height. Although the parents are gone, the landscape is not threatening, it spreads out in all directions, inviting exploration. It is open and calm, in contrast to the world of childhood fears.

‘The child fears that the disappearance of parents would release anarchy, hatred, and destruction because in the parents’ world the child knows no power, no control that is not imposed. In the eye-level world freedom is of a different kind, more responsible than ever before because the choices are your own, they are uncoerced and unbribed. “Free will is the experience of being the author of the law you obey.” This world is different from that shaped by the dependency dream.

‘Although we have no parents in the eye-level world, when we face each other we find companions. We share the same need for meaning, the same intimations of transcendence, the certainty of death, the saving joy of love. We can sense a new connection, a linking of equals that makes all of us one family, yet individuals. Only in the eye-level world do we emerge as ourselves, true to our own perceptions and strengths, able to respond realistically to the world that surrounds us.’

Lines and boxes

2006-09-28T12:05:00.000+01:00

Over the last few days, I've been playing with a fascinating program called ‘Omnigraffle’. Although I don’t consider myself a particularly analytical person, I often have to create ‘box and line’ diagrams and this is a very elegant tool for doing so. Indeed, it’s the kind of software I have always loved – the kind that with just one click can take a typical hierarchical tree structure and turn it into a ‘bubble’ diagram, with all the elements radiating from a single hub. And everything is beautifully spaced, too. None of the lines cross over, nothing gets garbled as a result of the conversion. Needless to say, it’s a Mac only program. But the point of this piece isn’t to sell someone else’s software (or to get you using a different kind of computer). Because, despite the pleasure I've got from this beautiful and clever little application, it has also helped me to see some of the real limitations of the whole lines and boxes paradigm.

The Mulla Nasruddin – the butt of a thousand Sufi jokes, who is either a fool or a wise man (depending on how you interpret his antics) – once observed: ‘There are two kinds of people: those who divide everything into two kinds, and those who don’t...’ And I have to admit I have problems with the whole idea of ‘analysis’, of breaking things down into labelled parts as a way of understanding them. Not that it doesn’t work: clearly, it does. Nearly all of our technologies have come from someone looking at a phenomenon, a process, a system, and turning it into a lines and boxes diagram. Treating things in this way makes them controllable. It doesn’t matter whether you’re designing a chemical plant, building a website or running a department. In every case the analysis is helping you to identify the necessary components and determine what sort of sequence they need to be arranged in. Nothing wrong with that, except what gets left out.

Putting things into boxes emphasises entities rather than relationships, yet it’s often the relationships that are the most important part: the lines that connect the boxes. Consider a simple example. We have three people: Peter, Brian and Sammy. Peter is Brian’s father, so let’s put them in separate boxes and join them with a line. Brian is Sammy’s father, so ditto. That probably seems quite straightforward, and it is if we are considering the three individuals, and the fact of their being connected. But suppose that instead we are interested in the experience of having, and being, a father. Then everything is reversed – suddenly it’s the lines that we’re interested in, and the people in the boxes much less so. What’s more the lines become much more complex than we’ve represented because they mean different things depending on which direction you follow them. Brian’s relationship with Peter – son to father – is not the same as Peter’s relationship with Brian. It’s a quite different experience being someone’s son to being their father. Something that Peter will understand, because his relationship to Sammy, whilst obviously being unique and personal and not reducible to a generality, is of a similar kind to Peter’s relationship to him (and of a quite different kind to his relationship to Peter). Our diagram fails to represent both the two way nature of these links, and the connections between what are shown as separate relationships.

Let’s push this a little further. Brian, who I'm going to put at the centre of my diagram, is also connected to Francesca, Sammy’s mother, Rose his sister, Qasim his boss, Winston his friend. He’s got six boxes around him, with six lines. But each of those lines means something completely different. Having a brother is totally different to having a husband. Friendship can be said (at least, in a very general way) to mean the same in both directions, while the employer-employee relationship clearly cannot. So at best, our diagram can show how individuals are connected (emphasis on individuals). And Brian being surrounded by six separated people doesn't really tell us anything: it’s a ‘so what?’ kind of diagram. However, if Rose is Qasim’s neighbour, and Francesca turns out to be having an affair with Winston, and Sammy is teaching Peter how to download free music onto his iPod, we’ve got some more links in there and the diagram is beginning to model a pattern of connectedness that might otherwise be complicated to explain.

Supposing, though, we turn it around and model how individuals are connected (emphasis on connected). Brian, in the middle, has these six links around him. And who is Brian? He is the person who lives up to the expectations, assumptions and roles these links demand: he’s ‘Dad’ ‘Son’ ‘Darling’ (and, of course, ‘Brian who must never find out’), ‘Bruv’, ‘Deputy Assistant Marketing Manager’ and ‘Bry, are you free for a drink?’. The only person who’s missing from this constellation of different Brians is the one that comes from the link between Brian and Brian: ‘Me!’. Should the seven Brians really all be in the same box? Is the Brian whose dogged loyalty so endears him to Qasim the same as the Brian Francesca finds so unexciting? No, because Qasim can’t afford to lose him and Francesca is wondering whether she should.

Okay, what’s this soap opera got to do with the kinds of diagrams we all need to produce? Lots, in fact. Because although our day to day models may be less colourful, we face exactly the same problems of exaggerating the boxes and downplaying the lines. What goes in the boxes isn’t as stable, consistent or united as the diagram suggests. And the relationships that we represent with the lines lose most of the information they can give us through such a simplistic depiction. In fact, in almost any situtation we choose to model, it’s the relationships that define the entities. Circumstances alter cases: context is everything. If we look at ourselves, this should be obvious: I may be chief executive of Bloggo enterprises, but when I’m changing my daughter’s nappy I'm a poor substitute for Mummy. "Do you know who I am?" "Yes, Mr Prescott, but you're still getting a ticket because your Jaguar is parked on a double yellow line!” Emphasising boxes give us control, but offers few opportunities for understanding. Emphasising lines, on the other hand, facilitates understanding. Particularly if we don’t feel the need to control.

One day, I like to fantasise, I might get to play with a program that doesn’t just turn one style of diagram into another, but can at the click of a button foreground the relationships and diminish the entities, or vice versa. Now that would be something!

Engineering trust

2006-09-13T12:32:00.000+01:00

It’s not hard to imagine a time, not very far hence, when it will be possible to do a ‘Yellow Pages’ type search on the Internet and get an ‘eBay’ type response. Want a plumber? 297 people gave positive feedback on this chap (and only one negative – but she had it in for the Poles). Looking for a Lawyer? “Lapwing, Roebuck and Whelp were wonderfully helpful with my divorce, but when I eventually got the bill it was more than three times what I had been led to believe!” There is a kind of inevitability behind what people are calling ‘The Social Software Revolution’ that makes this kind of thing not just possible, but very very likely indeed.

eBay hasn’t solved the problem with trust, but it has given us a remarkable mechanism with which to address it. If you think about it, the kind of endorsement that is provided by a number of happy customers through a trusted intermediary is about as good as we can get. It has the benefit of saving us the background research we know we ought to do, but never get around to, while giving us some genuine peace of mind. And in areas where we are taking a real risk, with someone we don’t know at all, it makes a huge difference.

What interests me most about this phenomenon is the way that it threatens to make the concept of the ‘brand’ obsolete, at least in the form that we know it. Brands came into existence as a guarantee of quality and consistency, at the beginning of the age of mass production and national distribution. A brand is a ‘promise’, as marketeers like to describe it. Unfortunately, however, in an era where the consumer hasn’t had much opportunity to answer back, these promises have frequently been overstated – and under-substantiated. The experience rarely turns out to match the expectations.

The eBay model turns this concept of the brand inside-out. Instead of relying on the vendor’s claims, it puts their reputation firmly in the hands of their customers. If the experience was good, one can hope that they will recognise it. If it was bad, on the other hand, one can almost guarantee that they will say so. Instead of rhetoric about ‘putting customers first’ or ‘being committed to quality of service’, it’s possible to see the real, unvarnished, performance.

Of course we’ve had something similar in the form of professional reviews for many years. Restaurant and entertainment columns appear daily in newspapers and can be highly influential – a damning remark from a theatre critic can still close a play. There have also been periodicals like Which conducting comprehensive tests of similar products to see which is the best buy. In some areas, like computers, hi-fi or cars, there are competing monthly magazines devoted to making comparisons and reviewing products. Enthusiasts wouldn’t dream of choosing without first hearing what they have to say.

But there is something different about what is happening in ‘Web 2.0’ that moves the whole idea of the empowered consumer up a notch. It has to do with the creation of communities of interest, and the way they are taking over the role of the expert. In The Wisdom of Crowds Business Columnist James Surowiecki shows how, under the right circumstances, groups are often much smarter in making decisions than individuals. We can listen to Jeremy Clarkson telling us that the people carrier we were thinking of buying is a dog. But much as we might enjoy his opinions, we also know that they are influenced by the fact that he frequently gets to drive Porsches and Ferraris as well. What’s he making a comparison with? The fact that several hundred people like us had good experiences with this particular car, and only a few had bad, says a whole lot more.

One of the implications of this revolution is that we will have to reconcile ourselves to the end of hyperbole: we're entering an age of grumbling realism. Human beings are slow to praise, but quick to blame. Ask anyone who has ever given out feedback forms to an audience. You will hear how people who seemed all smiles and excitement ended up giving just an ‘average’ score, while others who surely benefitted a great deal wrote lengthy complaints about the coffee or the air conditioning. Marketeers might pretend that such and such a product is the answer to our dreams, but even the most satisfied customers are unlikely to give it more than a “yeah, it’s OK!”

The challenge for marketing in this new era is going to be one of engagement. Communities of customers tend to be feisty, critical and realistic. Perhaps the most interesting example of this in recent years have been Macintosh users. Apple Computer has benefited enormously from having a group of people who believed in their products and who evangelised for them on an informal basis. But Macintosh users, who were the only community based around an individual product brand to be represented in mass circulation magazines, have by no means towed the company line. They frequently disputed Apple’s corporate strategy, debunked its CEOs, trashed its marketing and deprecated various product lines. Instead of passive consumers, they became active, articulate stakeholders.

Web 2.0, with its emphasis on social software and networking, promises to accelerate and spread this kind of active consumerism across pretty much all sectors, from government to b2b. Thinking of voting in a local election? 495 people said that Cllr Perkins dealt with their problems in four to six weeks. But, hang on, what’s this about him here? Want to give some money to charity? 56% of funds raised by ‘Flowering Deserts’ went for work in the field – putting them amongst the top ten performers. And so on. By putting our institutions into a virtual goldfish bowl where all can see and comment, the technology is bringing about real transparency.

Not paying enough attention

2006-09-12T08:54:00.000+01:00

In advertising and journalism, at least, there is some awareness of the importance of attention. A snappy headline or a particularly arresting image is often described as ‘attention grabbing’. And there is a recognition that, in a crowded marketplace, attracting and holding attention is not just desirable, but essential. Otherwise the ‘attention factor’ can seem something of a Cinderella in communications. We take it for granted, make use of it every day, yet rarely do we pause to think about it.

Attention is a key component of all human communication, from the non-verbal to the abstrusely intellectual. Indeed, it could be described as the key component. If we don’t have someone’s attention we are not communicating. There is almost nothing else we can say that about. If we don’t share a common language, we can still communicate. If the medium is not functioning properly – a breaking-up telephone line, for instance – we can still communicate. If the message isn't fully understood, we can still communicate. But once the other person isn't listening any more, it doesn’t matter how well everything else is working. There is no communication.

When we start to investigate attention, this totally unremarkable everyday faculty becomes extremely interesting. Attention is involved in everything human beings do, by no means just communication. It is tied up, in a fundamental way, with who we are – with our most basic sense of self. It is also something most of us have very little control over. Try to focus your attention on to a particular object, it doesn’t matter what, and maintain it without distraction. I’ll bet that after only a few seconds your mind is already wandering off, taking it’s own course. We can’t even direct our own concentration, let alone the trail of associations that lead us away from it.

It’s this, in fact, that makes the relationship between attention and communication all the more extraordinary. Because when we are paying attention to somebody (or, for that matter, to a communication they have created) we are able to maintain the focus of our attention, often for quite long periods at a time. OK, there are situations – and people – that switch us off. But unless we suffer from some sort of attention deficit, these are not the norm. Most of the time communication engages us: it attracts and holds our attention. You’re with me so far, right?

Attention has many different facets, all of which are fascinating. The one that concerns me most here is the phenomenon of ‘paying attention’. Something strange happens when someone pays attention to us, that has the ability to make us feel much better. We take pleasure in receiving attention (assuming, that is, that it is not ‘unwelcome’ attention!). It has the ability to enhance our moods, boost our confidence and self-esteem, affect the way we think and feel about things. Even negative attention can be preferable to none at all, as anyone who has small children will testify. Attention has an effect apparently regardless of the content or context. It's the being attended to that is important.

One of the least recognised effects of paying attention to someone, but one that can be easily demonstrated, is its ability to moderate their beliefs, feelings, positions. The simple act of listening to a person who holds extreme, even distorted, beliefs can help them begin to soften their position. But by listening I don’t mean agreeing with them – just accepting them as a worthwhile human being and giving them the attention they need. Indeed, engaging too much with a person's beliefs – debating and challenging and arguing with them – can have exactly the opposite effect of entrenching them even more strongly.

How this works is still something of a mystery, but it is clear that it has nothing to do with the beliefs per se. More likely is that attending works on the sense of social isolation that goes with extreme positions, on the sensation of being marginalised that allows paranoia and hostility to flourish. We’ve all had the feeling of being ignored and neglected by someone, believing all sorts of negative things about our relationship with them, and then a surprise meeting or telephone call suddenly makes us feel much better. Psychological research suggests that even unrelated experiences can improve perceptions in this way: subjects who ‘found’ a planted five dollar bill on the floor of an American shopping mall responded more positively to questions about the happiness of their marriages, their satisfaction with their jobs, their general state of health and happiness than a control group who didn’t. They even claimed their washing machines broke down less often! Their attention needs had been unexpectedly met, in this case by a trivial inanimate object.

However, there are many marginalised people in our societies who are not receiving enough attention. When a child isn’t attended to, he starts playing up. But when an adult doesn't receive enough attention, the consequences can be far more serious – from mental (and even physical) illness through to outbursts of anger and violence. We've all seen elderly people given short shrift in a shop, for example, because they wanted more attention with their transaction – to pause and talk, rather than just to pay and walk away. Isolated and lonely, their attention demands aren’t being met. Most of us probably don’t feel we have any responsibility for providing for them, either, but the consequences of not doing so are potentially so serious that we have to ask ourselves whether we can really afford not to. We now have plenty of evidence of what can happen when groups of people feel alienated and ignored.

I would suggest that giving attention should be part of the ‘licence to operate’ of every organisation, a fundamental of the contract that it has with the society it serves. After all, organisations also make attention demands, believing they have a right to ‘grab’ our attention for their own ends. And helping employees to understand the value of paying attention – which in skilled hands can be qualitative, rather than timewasting – can be good for business, too. Even though we may not always recognise this in ourselves, there is no doubt that we like attention along with our change. Sometimes we even buy things just for the attention – a point that is well worth considering.

What happens when we communicate?

2006-09-11T22:22:00.000+01:00

At first glance, this looks like an obvious question. So influenced are we now by communications technologies that most of us would probably answer: ‘we transfer information, of course!’ The problem is, however, that when we look at what goes on in our everyday interaction, information exchange doesn’t appear to be all that significant. Much of what we say, for instance, is often already known to the person we’re talking to. This is the ‘Hi Honey, I’m home!’ syndrome. And for some time linguists have been telling us that ‘information' comes a poor third to ‘involvement’ and ‘persuasion’ in the purposes for which we use language. As feminist linguist Deborah Tannen writes in her That’s not what I meant!: ‘Very little of what is said is important for the information contained in the words. But that doesn’t mean that the talk isn’t important. It is crucially important, as a way of showing that we’re involved with each other, and how we feel about being involved. Our talk is saying something about our relationship.’

Even if we look at communication from an evolutionary perspective, as Merlin Donald did in Origins of the Modern Mind, it’s apparent that there was no driving need to exchange information behind the evolution of language. The things our early hominid ancestors needed to do didn’t require words to communicate. And this has hardly changed today. Many complex activities can still be picked up simply by watching someone doing them. It’s not necessary to be told how to change a tyre, swim backstroke, ride a bicycle or bind a book. And, actually, explanation can often get in the way.

Robin Dunbar proposes an interesting theory about the origins of human communication in his Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. He suggests that language came about as a substitute for grooming. Primates comb through each others’ fur, picking out insects and bits of twig, as a way of managing relationships in their groups. Who grooms who is important, and it establishes a pecking order that helps keep the group together. However when our remote ancestors started living in bigger groups, the amount of time that needed to be invested in grooming – which is a one-to-one activity – became unmanageable. Language, Dunbar suggests, was a means of achieving the same ends, but allowed for more efficient one-to-many exchanges. His theory certainly makes sense of much of the kind of day to day communicating we all do: talking not because we have something important to say, but because the engagement with each other is important.

I’d like to go a step further than this, and make a suggestion that ties information back in with this idea of communicating as a form of interaction. This is that we should see communication as an exchange of energy. Energy meaning here something that effects a change of state. And interacting with each other is clearly a way of changing each other’s state. We only have to look at everyday conversation, where one person can delight, thrill, horrify, intimidate or seduce another simply through the process of talking. But the same thing can also happen in impersonal communications, too: something written or recorded by someone we don’t know can move us just as much as a conversation with a loved one. Plato or Homer, for instance, can reach us across cultures – and across the centuries – to bring about a significant change, not only in what and how we think, but in how we feel and act, too. In the same way that physicist David Bohm described matter as ‘frozen light’, we could describe information as ‘frozen interaction’ – potential for transforming our thinking, feeling and behaviour, locked up in the content of the communication.

Looked at in this way, ‘information’ and ‘presentation’ – content and form – aren’t separate, but are part and parcel of the same process. Primates communicate energy, maintaining and changing the politics of the group, by running their hands over each other. Early hominids learned they could achieve the same thing with several others at the same time by articulating meaningful sounds. Later humans found that energy could be transferred to a far bigger group through visual marks – with the advantage that the ‘speaker’ didn’t need to be physically present with the ‘listeners’. Today, we do the same thing on an even vaster scale, using new technologies. But what really matters is the process that takes place in the individual – the change in their state, as a result of this energetic encounter. In the case of ‘Hi Honey, I'm home!’, this is the day-to-day maintenance of a loving relationship. In the case of Plato or Homer, it can be a complete revitalisation of our intellect, emotions and behaviour.