Thinking Back and Thinking Forward

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”

- Helen Keller

The pandemic gives us a golden opportunity to slow down and think. Wisdom comes with experience and the passage of years, group genius is enriched by the wisdom of all participants, and we need group genius as we think about the post-pandemic world we want. The chapter synopsis appended below may help.

Toot sweet,

Arthur

Book Chapter: (Robert Greene) The Laws of Human Nature (2018), Chapter 6

“The years teach much which the days never know.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chapter 6. Elevate Your Perspective. The Law of Shortsightedness

The Englishman John Blunt (1665-1733) was an enthusiastic promoter of the South Sea Company – in effect a scheme whereby government debt would be managed by the Company in return for a monopoly on possible future trade with South America. Blunt had become angry and envious of an economic boom in France, driven largely by success of the Mississippi Company, which was exploiting resources of the Louisiana territories. Had he waited he would have seen the subsequent bursting of the French bubble. Instead, he persuaded himself and countless other investors in England to invest their wealth in England’s even more risky version of the idea.

Indeed a boom ensued, and in 1720 “an area of London known as Exchange Alley, where almost all stocks were sold” became the daily scene of a buying frenzy: “As one Dutch banker observed of the scene in Exchange Alley, ‘[It resembled] nothing so much as if all the Lunatics had escaped out of the Madhouse at once.’” The financial boom immediately led to establishment of other English joint stock companies. Sounds like good news, right?

Trouble with the scheme soon became evident. The South Sea Company had been seen as a solution to the problem of national debt. Government insiders personally stood to gain or lose financially. In June 1720, the English Parliament passed the Bubble Act, which in effect reduced the Company’s competition. The Bubble Act forbade the establishment of joint stock companies unless approved by royal charter. As the other joint stock companies began to fail, the South Sea Company’s own house of cards began to collapse. John Blunt lost a fortune. He “was hounded in the streets and nearly killed by an assassin. He had to quickly escape London. He spent the rest of his life in the town of Bath, scraping by on the very modest means still left to him after Parliament seized almost all of the money he had earned through the South Sea scheme.” Sir Isaac Newton himself had been persuaded to invest a good part of his personal savings; Newton is quoted by Robert Greene: “I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.”

John Blunt was no fool – on the contrary, he was a pragmatic businessman – but the dramatic story coming from Paris, of riches made so quickly, led him astray. Get rich quick! “The madness that overcame Blunt soon infected the king, the Parliament, and eventually an entire nation of citizens renowned for their common sense.”

The author shows how this same shortsightedness causes havoc in our personal lives. Someone we had depended on for emotional support or some other need seems to be ignoring us (it turns out that our assumptions about why this was happening were all wrong), and we jump into another relationship with someone who catches our eye…and disaster follows. “It would seem, then, that wisdom tends to come to us when it is too late, mostly in hindsight. But there is in fact a way for us humans to manufacture the effect of time, to give ourselves an expanded view in the present moment. We can call this the farsighted perspective, and it requires the following process. First, facing a problem, conflict, or some exciting opportunity, we train ourselves to detach from the heat of the moment. We work to calm down our excitement or our fear. We get some distance.” We engage in a conscious process involving “distance from the present, a deeper look at the source of problems, a wider perspective on the overall context of the situation, and a look further into the future – including the consequences of our actions and our own long-term priorities.”

Elevating your perspective can be thought of in terms of moving from a forest at the base of a mountain and then, by climbing to a higher elevation, being able to see the entire landscape for the first time. The rewards of the climb and the dangers of failing to make it are of life and death importance. Far too often, we are beguiled by the imminent – the fear of terrorism, the desire for a cigarette – and lose sight of the danger of the more distant but far larger issue: the effects of global warming, the risk of lung cancer.

Greene specifies four signs of shortsightedness and strategies for responding to them. “Only by seeing these signs can we combat them.” The first sign of shortsightedness is unintended consequences. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was something many people (myself included) had warned against. That’s at the global level. If you want an example from the personal level, think back to a relationship about which you have regrets. Imagine what it would have been like if you had thought deeper and wider and further into the future when you had the chance.

The second sign of shortsightedness is tactical hell. Let’s say you are at odds with your spouse, a colleague, and one of your siblings. “At times, caught in these battles, you feel defensive and petty, your spirit drawn downward. This is almost a sure sign that you have descended into tactical hell.” The “solution is to back out temporarily or permanently from these battles…. Get your ego to calm down…. Win through your actions, not through your words….If you determine that a particular battle is important, with a greater sense of detachment you can now plot a more strategic response….And in life as in warfare, strategists will always prevail over tacticians.”

The third sign is ticker tape fever. Just before the financial collapse of 1929, there was a widespread addiction to “playing the stock market.” A physical dimension of the addiction was the sound of the ticker tape that signaled each little change in the price of a stock. (Now we have emails, Facebook, Tweets, and the daily news.) The micro-trends are often exactly opposite the longer-term trends within which they are embedded. Early in the American Civil War, things looked bad for the Union side. Abraham Lincoln was patient, and he persisted despite the opposition to the war that surged against him. “I walk slowly but I never walk back,” he said. The tide of battle turned, Lincoln was vindicated, and the union survived. Slow down, step back, remember your long-term goals and how to reach them; and persist in the knowledge that “time will eventually prove us right.”

The fourth sign of shortsightedness is getting lost in trivia. You may be telling yourself that “God is in the details,” but unless that attention to detail is guided by a strategic plan, the details can quickly become a swamp. “What you need is a mental filtering system based on a scale of priorities and your long-term goals.”

Drawing the chapter to conclusion, Greene advises us to “widen our relationship to time,” seeing it as a friend. Each age of life has its advantages. Aging gives greater perspective; death teaches you that each moment is precious. Awareness of this will make you calmer, more realistic – and a superior strategist. You will be able “to see further into the future, a potential power that we humans have only begun to tap into.”