Music to the Ears

SPEED MAN

LUCKY CHARMS AS A LIFESTYLE

Sacrifice? What sacrifice?

Bombs and Borders

My wife and I were celebrating the New Year in Chiang Mai when we heard the news of the explosions that had just stopped festivities in Bangkok. As usual the global media tended to overplay the incident and life continues much as before in the Thai capital. But Thais are considered to be a peace-loving people; it is appalling to think that the spectre of fundamentalism now haunts all of us irrespective of our beliefs or where we live in the world. There appears to be no escape from this phenomenon of pointless bloodshed and slaughter.

But what exactly is fundamentalism? At first sight it may seem little more than a militant form of piety that leads to a rebellion against modern secularism and the materialistic trappings of contemporary society. But religious fundamentalisms are a very modern phenomenon. They operate in an engagement with modernity and are thoroughly intertwined with secularism as a result.

Thus religious and secular fundamentalisms are inextricably linked, answering similar needs and occupying a shared intellectual and psychological space. While religious fundamentalism is grounded in the belief that the word of ‘God’ must be taken literally, the secular form is typically based upon some doctrine (such as freedom of speech) or text that is similarly thought to be canonical and beyond dispute.

Each fundamentalism inhabits its own universe and adherents are absolutely certain about their beliefs and destinies. The rest of us cannot quite grasp or achieve this level of certitude or of self-belief, though many of us might dearly like to do so. Thus fundamentalists have achieved things that are always just beyond the grasp of those (self)-excluded from their system of belief.

In this respect fundamentalists trade on a very modern syndrome that we might term ‘meaning-deficit disorder’. We all experience and suffer from this in today’s world. This condition arises from the fundamental uncertainties and risks that are pervasive throughout the modern experience. In addition, most of us find contemporary life so incredibly complicated and events so difficult to fully grasp that we relinquish any hope of making sense of it all.

Fundamentalists ‘cure’ this disorder. They do not lack understanding nor are they uncertain. In many respects they represent an idealised version of the rest of us. Indeed, in some ways they are more like ourselves than we are, since they have the certitudes that we lack but continue to desire and pursue. This is why at some level, everyone is a potential fundamentalist.

Human beings are simultaneously and ambivalently alike and different. What divides us are also the things that we share. In oher words, what divides us are not so much differences as similarities. But it can be more difficult to acknowledge sameness than to recognise difference, and fundamentalists work with this paradox in a particular way: they offer a withdrawal from difference by insisting that everything should be the same – the same as them (and many of them are prepared to die to achieve this). The command they issue is that all must conform to their way of life, worship their God (who is the only true God), share their beliefs, and their ideals.

This idea is closely related to what Sigmund Freud called ‘the narcissism of minor differences’. Human beings are narcissistically fascinated with minor differences because, deep down, we all desire to be the same. Fundamentalism connects with this yearning, offering an idealised version of its possible applicability in a real world of unimaginable diversity and plurality.

This proposition carries with it five consequences for the way fundamentalists think about and relate to the world: extremism, leader-fixation, sacrifice, aggression, and endurance:

1. Idealisation is closely linked to extremism and the blatant disregard for alternative views. But pursuit of an ideal can also promote blind faith as against pragmatic reason, thus forming a basis for an extreme, exclusive refusal to accommodate different perspectives.
2. Investing these ideals and principles in the figure of a single leader (as often happens), also encourages extremism. Those close to the leader, who exist in his shadow or proximity and who understand and offer deference to him, are the foot soldiers of extremism. Those not so close are the same but ignoble; they need to be converted.
3. In order to realise their ideals, fundamentalists (particularly religious ones) need to engage in sacrifice: both of the search for meaning that entraps others, and indeed of the ‘meaning of life’ itself. This explains why the mindset and increasingly the practice (as in ‘martyrdom’ suicides) of self-sacrifice is so central to fundamentalism.
4. Fundamentalists share a fear of aggression and violence (again like everybody else) but in their case these fears take a specific, acute form: the urge to eliminate what is perceived to be the source of aggression, namely difference. For them the only way to eliminate violence is for us all to be the same.
5. Fundamentalists pride themselves on enduring pain and suffering in the name of their intolerance of other attitudes or aspirations. For them, endurance of pain, suffering and the struggle itself recommits them to the ideal of making sameness from difference.

Appreciating these consequences highlights three key implications for understanding the politics of fundamentalism; implications we would do well to heed, particularly as current strategies are doing nothing more than fuelling, rather than dampening, terrorist atrocities.

First, in place of the heavy emphasis on difference we see exhibited everywhere from markets and the media to intellectual and cultural life, there is a need to refocus attention on the notion of sameness. A shift of this kind might enable genuine insights into recent conflicts.

Second, an emphasis on sameness helps clarify why fundamentalisms are not cultural in nature. Religious fundamentalisms, for example, do not care one jot about culture; on the contrary they are idealised movements that transcend culture in their single-minded devotion to the word of God. The Taliban, for instance, banned Afghan music, dancing, local festivals, and destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhist statues. The movement was also indifferent to any particular cuisine, as long as it served halal meat. Particular territories do not matter, nor particular cultural, ethnic or linguistic groups. As long as individuals commit themselves absolutely to the word of God, anyone – coming from anywhere and from any community – can be a member.

In this respect they demonstrate a genuine radical universalism. In principle they treat everyone as the same: the ultimate cause of humankind’s failure and rebellion throughout history is not his external environment and circumstances but his inward, sinful nature which has rejected the rule of God and asserted self-rule instead. Thus, Christian fundamentalism as well as its Islamic counterpart are individualistic in their doctrines. They both involve practices of individual conversion and redemption. They are not social movements!

Third, the focus on sameness provides us with the means to grasp how fundamentalisms as a collective endeavour (as well as an individual motivation) operate. Take national borders for example. Arguments for rapid globalisation maintain that nation-state borders are irrelevant to the international system since they have long-since been permeated and undermined by truly global economic and political forces. This is also exactly what fundamentalisms argue: borders are shared across the world, but at the same time they divide us – let’s get rid of them!

Market fundamentalists, for example, see national borders as a major impediment to international trade. All economic agents should face exactly the same conditions of competition; they should be eliminated in the name of sameness. A ‘level playing-field’ (flat, smooth and uniform) is the ideal image.

Likewise, religious fundamentalisms share this antagonism towards national borders. Essentially, militant Islam is a trans-territorial movement, devoid of any real sense of a cultural community of belonging. Its only common link is to a religious one of faith and struggle. Thus it undermines the idea of community at the same time as it celebrates it. Its perspective is one of a radicalised itinerant and de-territorialised ‘warrior politics’ aimed at establishing an Islamic umma on a global scale.

The movement to achieve this umma is also not based on any actual community or territory; it is imagined as everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The ‘new frontier’ idealised by fundamentalists is a fluid one: first the reconquest of the ‘conquered’ Islamic lands, then the push to extend Islamic rule and sharia law to the rest.
Islamic fundamentalists conceive of an open, ever-moving frontier of struggle and conquest; their ‘politics’ is de-terriorialised and abundantly unconstrained. Small, roving bands of militants is the iconic organisational form, loosely linked into and by a global network. The traditional nation-state is redundant in this conception. Hence the end of the Westphalian system as announced by so many of al-Qaida’s ideologues.

But this view is shared by Christian fundamentalism. Here, when the second coming occurs and Armageddon arrives, God will cast his rule over the entire earth. The world will have a true theocratic government in which the rule of God will be administered worldwide through his representative, Jesus Christ. This is the explicit Christian fundamentalist conception of globalisation. Again, the idea of an extra-territorial global community driven exclusively by religious commitment is evident. Both these fundamentalisms are predicated on an ideology of sameness, which provides the required unifying condition for the exercise of their respective competing (different) visions of the good life.

How does all of this help address contemporary circumstances? How does it help us see clearly the new reality? The experience of conflicting religious fundamentalisms suggests that the emerging world is a radical pluralistic society – a diverse and multifaceted pluriverse rather than a single universe. This means there is no existing common sphere to which all citizens can readily belong. How then is any coexistence, peace, progress and prosperity possible?

Under the circumstances described here, peace will need to be newly composed. Amity of any form is an undertaking; it must be fabricated and constructed between opposing parties. And the gods who drive current conflicts would need to be taken into the peacemaking chamber. It is difficult to see them being ‘left outside’. This new form of peacemaking is likely to take a long time because it entails a challenge to all parties, of learning to live together peacefully in a different world.

In the meantime, other things can and should be done. In the face of globalisation a programme of ‘re-framing’ the global (focusing not on difference but the universality of the contemporary human condition) is not beyond feasibility. This would enable us to address global issues like climate change and endemic poverty far more effectively. It would also have distinct advantages over two existing political and intellectual forces: idealistic global cosmopolitanism (whether secular or religious) and the tendency towards interventionist repression. These are equally dangerous responses to the present international predicament.

Fear of difference drives fundamentalists towards sameness. But in that impulse lies the seed of a path beyond war, poverty and current tensions.

MYTH MAKING

Australians are so used to accepting the information thrown at them as fact that they hardly ever stop to question if the ‘facts’ make sense or not. Myths are talked into being this way. These lead to false beliefs, which then become embedded in the culture.
One such prevalent myth is that we need to import our leaders – that home grown varieties are somehow less capable than Americans or the British. Trite fabrications such as this are dangerous for many reasons. Firstly, they can so easily mislead company Boards, who are responsible for ensuring excellence in the top job, to undertake extensive and costly searches overseas when the solution is right under their noses.
For example, there is reportedly an extensive international search underway to find John McFarlane’s successor at the ANZ. McFarlane is by any measure one of the world’s great leaders. And yet, by his own admission, he has at least three people in senior executive roles that could do his job. If (or when) the Board appoints an overseas applicant they will no doubt trot out the usual lame excuses – similar to the rationalisations bandied around when Telstra was in a similar situation: internal applicants are too inexperienced, too young, too old, or had insufficient banking credibility… Take your pick; they are all bullshit!
Furthermore, myths such as these do nothing for our self-esteem in the intensely competitive, zero geography world of global business. We must never forget that Australians have successfully led some of the world’s largest organizations – including McDonalds, the Ford Motor Company, Qantas, British Airways and Philip Morris, for example. Likewise, scanning the domestic horizon throws up people of the calibre of Jonathan Ling (Fletcher Construction), Graham Turner (Flight Centre), Greig Gailey (Zinifex), Michael Carmody (Customs & Excise), Greg Bourne (World Wildlife Fund), Allan Moss (Macquarie Bank), Steve Vamos (Microsoft) and Roger Corbett (Woolworth) – great leaders who are undeniably as good as you are likely to find anywhere overseas.
Another myth is that the best people will demand obscene amounts of money in order for them to accept a job ‘down under’. If one excludes the US market, where rampant egos routinely pervade corporate life, racking up salaries into the bargain, that is simply not the case. It is surely a case of supply and demand? Besides, to be brutally honest, recent corporate performance in the US is way below par.
Of course, most of the people already mentioned above could earn many times more than their current salaries if they were prepared to move to the US (woops, one of them actually is on the move!) But today’s most extraordinary and inventive leaders can also be found in India, Scandinavia, Indonesia, Singapore, Russia, China, Brazil – and, yes, even Australia! Once again, orthodox US models of self-belief, wrapped up in excess and served up to the rest of the world via the likes of the Harvard Business Review, so easily sway us into believing the absurd.
Outside of the over-hyped US market, there is little evidence to suggest that the most brilliant and entrepreneurial CEOs are in it for the money. Take Nandan Nilekani for example, recently rated Businessman of the Year by Forbes Asia. Nilekani and his cofounders started Infosys (one of the fastest growing and most successful companies in the world) by scraping together US$250. Twenty-five years later Nilekani is a billionaire with 66,000 employees, but takes only US$103,000 in salary.

I guess there are two major lessons in all of this. Firstly we need to grow up and realise that in a nation of 20 million people who constantly excel in the arts, theatre, sport, journalism, music and film, it would be most unlikely if we did not also excel in leadership and in business. Secondly, we need to have the confidence to be ourselves, with our own appreciation of what great leadership is and even our own standards of what is appropriate (or not) to pay for truly excellent performance.

DILEMMA IN IRAQ

HIDING BEHIND THE WORDS

Freedom versus Security

Ashes to Ashes

Posted Richard Hames  - World Thought Leader & Author   - Monday, January 15 2007

My mother’s wisdom 

This is the first of many blog entries by World Thought Leader Richard Hames - January 2007.

Given the number of books I still need to write, it is indeed fortunate that longevity runs in the Hames family. My mother died three years ago at the grand old age of 97. In the end she was blind and a little bit grumpy but utterly alert to what was going on around her.
Mum had many friends to whom she would talk for hours at a time about almost anything that happened to attract her attention. A true scavenger of trivia, she would eagerly regale anyone within earshot, reciting obscure details about everything under the sun – from the best recipe for egg custard to the mating habits of the common cockroach! Mum was never short of an opinion (or three) and remained curious about life right up to her death.
Which is not that unusual, except for the fact that she was forced to leave school at the age of 12 and was taken into service. She subsequently worked as a maid and later as a cook-housekeeper in the south of England until she was well past 50. But although her education was virtually non-existent, she valued knowledge above everything else. She was a simple woman but a wise one.
In her later years the radio became an important link to the outside world. Each day she would listen to the evening news, often making quirky yet startlingly pertinent pronouncements on the state of things. Her view on terrorism was, quite simply, that the world had gone mad. She couldn’t abide Margaret Thatcher and the air would turn blue if she so much as heard her name mentioned. ‘Just a third-rate teacher’ she would snort in disgust.
Tony Blair became her pin-up boy. Quite literally as it happens. She had at least four framed prints on her wall. ‘His mum must be terribly proud of him’ she would mutter, just loud enough for me to hear. ‘At least she knows what he does!’ The quick glance in my direction was subtle yet pointed. My mother, you see, had never really understood what I did to earn a crust. She was incredibly confused by the fact that I remained at University for so many years, refusing to acknowledge any distinction whatsoever between the teacher and the taught. ‘So much study can’t be good for your health you know’ she would half-seriously taunt. ‘When are you going to get a proper job?’
When I eventually started to practice medicine her demeanour changed. She understood that you see. Medicine was a proper job. Besides, ‘My son’s a doctor’ had a lovely ring to it, especially in a village where status and achievement was so important. But when I changed course to pursue music only months later she was totally baffled and not a little distraught. Her worst fears were once again confirmed. Her youngest son was a complete failure!
How often we rely on preconceived ideas of what constitutes success. Our beliefs and values are shaped by worldviews that resist visibility and rational explanation. How else could I explain to my mother what a CEO did; that she might earn many times more than the average worker yet be paid for performance that was mediocre by any standard? Mum would have stared at me as if I had been pulling her leg. ‘You’d better tell them to get a proper job’ she would have said.