My one liner: Neuroscience is a discipline still in its infancy.  This book reaches some quite startling conclusions about how we  can “re-wire”our own brains and hence tweak or change our own personality.

We know intuitively that our minds can be “trained” so that we become an expert in something, or maintain our mental agility (think Sudoku, or those Nintendo puzzles designed for old codgers).  Neuroscience is an evolving discipline, and research has shown that we can take this intuition much further.  
 
It goes something like this.  
 
Our personality can be described by six Dimensions of a person’s “Emotional Style” – we sit at some point on line between two extremes for each of those Dimensions, and the combination of all those points, in essence sums up to form our personality.  Now, here’s the interesting bit.  Which part of the line we sit on with respect to each Dimension depends on either the activity in, or physical properties of, a particular part of the brain. 

So what, I hear you ask.  We are born with particular brain characteristics, and therefore our “personality” is determined by genetics and that’s it. End of  story.
 
Not so, according to the authors, Richard Davidson (a neuroscientist) and Sharon Begley, a science writer.  

Davidson has spent over four decades researching this, and reckons that the size, shape and activity of the various parts of the brain can be changed by  “exercise” in the same way that we might change our body shape and fitness by
going to the gym. In other words the brain exhibits neuroplasticity.
 
The implication ?  We can reconfigure our own brain in order to change our location within each Dimension of Emotional Style, and hence alter our own personality over time.  Nurture can override nature, in other words.

The book concludes with practical actions we can take in order to reconfigure the brain, ranging from different styles of meditation, to targeted social training “drills”. It also provides possible ways to treat “disorders” such as depression or autism.
 
What are the six Dimensions of Emotional Style ? They are: (1) Resilience Style (how quickly or slowly do you shake off a setback ?); (2) Outlook Style (broadly, are you an optimist or a pessimist ?) (3) Social Intuition Style (are you good, or bad, at reading visual, aural and oral clues from other people and hence gauging other people’s emotional state ?) (4) Self-Awareness Style (are you intensely self-aware of physical cycle and states of your own body, and are able to relate them to changes in your own mood and behaviour, or alternatively do have difficulty in understanding why you behave the way you do ?); (5) Sensitivity to Context Style (how often, or not do you adapt your actions or behaviour to current social situation ?); (6) Attention Style (how easy or difficult do you find it to focus on a particular task, rather than letting your thoughts or attention wander ?).  
 
An example.  Social Intuition. Guess who this is:
 
“I ushered him to a quiet table [to] get waiters to bring him lunch, [but] he would have none of it.  Maroon robe swirling, he walked up to the buffet table, took a plate, and waited in line to serve himself like everyone else – attracting no small number of stares, but even more smiles of appreciation that this Nobel laureate, head of the Tibetan government in exile, best-selling author, and spiritual leader was waiting his turn for poached salmon, rice pilaf, and a Weight-Watchers nightmare of desserts like everyone else.  Social Intuition, indeed.”
 
Note, the Dimensions of Emotional Style are a continuum and each person sits at some point on the continuum for each Dimension.  Note also that for each Dimension there is not one “good” extreme and one “bad” extreme.  Take Self  Awareness.  At first blush you may think it is good to be highly Self-Aware.  It means you can quickly recognise when you are angry, sad, jealous or afraid, and can relate this to emotional cues within your body. But, taken to the extreme, “someone with very sensitive emotional antennae for his own feelings who observes the pain of another will feel that person’s anxiety or sadness in both mind and body –experiencing a surge of the stress hormone cortisol, for instance, as well as elevated heart rate and blood pressure.”

So how does neuroplasticity work in practice ? Well, for example, scientific research and experimentation conducted by Davidson demonstrates that a more Positive Outlook Style is caused by a stronger physical link between the Pre-Frontal Cortex and the ventrial Striatum (see the Diagram, apologies for the hand-drawing, probably the first time I have drawn a human body part since ‘O’ Level Biology).  So to give yourself a more positive Outlook if indeed that is what you want (Remember: pessimism can be good as well, as it may make you a better manager of your personal risk), you need to do exercises which strengthen that link. The authors suggest repeatedly putting yourself in situations which require forethought and planning. Slightly counter-intuitively, this means you actually repeatedly place yourself in front of temptations for instant gratification (e.g. junk food, shopping for luxury goods), and practice refusing, because you convince yourself this would be better for you in the long term.
 
As a supplement, they advocate techniques originally developed by Giovanni Fava (University of Bologna, Italy), called “well-being therapy”, which also strengthens the Pre-Frontal Cortex to ventrial Striatum link. Broadly, each day, write down positive characteristics of one or two you know, express gratitude regularly (and look into people’s eyes when you say “thank you”), and compliment other people on a regular basis (again, looking into their eyes when you do so). 
 
What I like about this book is that it leads you through the link from the scientific to the practical (as Davidson says: “I am admittedly biased, but I believe that any program that purports to alter something as fundamental as Emotional Style simply has greater credibility if it is grounded in neuroscience). And it leads us through the evolution of the research, from its slightly rickety days in the early 1970s (electrodes strapped to the head monitoring dream activity in volunteer students, with results recorded on polygraphs) to 21st century fMRI analysis in highly controlled environments.  
 
We learn how early science and philosophy contributed. Charles Darwin’s 1872 book “The Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals”, emphasised the instinctive signs of emotions, particularly facial expressions, hence providing an indication that different emotions must be linked with distinct physiological profiles.  Or Carl Jung’s autobiography, entitled Memories, Dreams, Reflections, containing the first observations about introversion and extraversion as traits, and speculating about psychological and physiological differences among people of each type.
 
And there is alot about Buddhist Monks.  Richard Davidson tells of his meetings with, and subsequent co-operation from, the Dalai Lama in collaring monks (the “meditation Olympians”) to participate in medical trials on the effects on the brain of different styles of meditation.  Initial attempts to get older mountain-dwelling monks in Dharamsala to participate “on-location” were, as hilariously recounted, a complete disaster.  But persistence paid off, and younger, more outward-looking monks did eventually collaborate in studies in the USA, leading to findings that prolonged meditation did increase levels of “neural synchrony”, a phenomenon whereby neurons from different parts of the brain fire off at exactly the same time, a process which research apparently demonstrates will typically make cognitive and emotional processes become more integrated and coherent.

This is a difficult area of science, and has been tackled well.  Should you adopt the conclusions and recommendations in order to develop your personality in the ways that are proposed ? Well, the approaches suggested are hard work. And it would be difficult for a layman to verify the scientific research that underpins the conclusions, so you would have to take it all at face value, and hence it would be somewhat of a leap of faith. But then, we don’t read scientific research papers before joining a gym and doing physical exercise.  So perhaps this is no different.

There is no Wikipedia link for this book. The link to the author's website is here.

Steven Strange & Jack Zupko (Eds) – Stoicism: Traditions and Tranformations (2004)

My one liner: A collection of articles which traces the development of the Stoic school from its origins through to it contemporary application. The early articles are seriously heavy going, but there are some real gems in here for the lay reader who perseveres.

Since I come to most of my reading as a non-specialist, I feel comfortable suggesting this book to the lay reader, even though some of the articles (particularly the first few) will be 75% impenetrable (although those with some school level Latin or Greek may be able to get that down to 50%). Indeed it gave me comfort when I read the opening paragraphs of the introduction, which says that in compiling the book there was a possible “High Road” approach and a “Low Road” approach, the latter “would focus less on questions that interested ancient Stoics and more on broader tendencies and trends, looking at the way Stoic doctrines were employed in new settings and against different competitors.”  The editors have decided to take the low road. And therefore the reader can equally do likewise.

 To that end, if you need a primer on Stoic philosophy, start, as always, with the Wikipedia entry on Stoicism.  No shame there.  
  
How can these be translated into our contemporary lifestyles, if at all ? The final essay in the collection is by Lawrence E. Becker on Stoic Emotion”. Becker takes us through contemporary developments and attempts to demonstrate that ancient Stoic principles can be applied to our modern lifestyles, with a few “adjustments to the ancient doctrines”.  To take a concrete example, Becker tells us that “Neurophysiologists have identified at least four anatomically distinct structures in the “ancient” or subcortical portion of the human brain that generate affective senses –fear, rage, panic, and goal oriented desire”.  But if these are neurologically generated, how can one then apply a Stoic discipline to controlling these ? The answer is broadly that the neurological response is a “raw” one. The cognitive content that turns it into full-fledged emotion can still be controlled and tamed.  
 
Becker’s essay is interesting because it also forces us to answer some difficult questions about the “good” or value to society of emotions. The modern world seems to feed us with the view that expressing and feeling emotion is a good thing in its own right.  But this is potentially problematic, as human emotion is arguably good only insofar as humans are emotional creatures and expressing emotion allows us to communicate with other humans using emotional gestures. In other words the argument is“frustratingly circular”. Stoics, on the other hand place much less value on emotion, valuing instead the cognitive response which allows us to control our emotions so as to reduce our material attachments. In turn this also makes us think about the nature of attachment, in particular attachment to others.  A Stoic sage will love another person in a way that many would not recognise. In other words “she would not for example, become so attached to others that she literally cannot bear the prospect of losing them, any more than she would be attached to her own life in a way that made the prospect of her own death unbearable.  Nor would she wish others to love her in that way – to be desolate and helpless when she is gone, unable to bear the loss. What Stoics wish for others is what we wish for ourselves: good lives; virtuous lives; including the ability to cope with loss.”  

What this means in practice however is that a Stoic will not fit in many of the commonly prescribed behavioural norms, and will come across as aloof and detached and unemotional.

 Another interesting article in the book deals with contemporary approaches to foreign aid from developed to developing countries (Martha Nussbaum: Duties of Justice, Duties of Material Aid – Cicero’s Problematic Legacy). Its central tenet is that developed countries do not make enough financial transfers to developing countries in the form of direct aid to fight poverty, so-called Material Aid”. Nussbaum traces this allegedly moral deficiency back to a chain of political thought that goes right back to Cicero (who arguably was in a good position to comment as he wrote the work, De Officiis, whilst on the run to escape assassination from Antony and the other triumvirs in 44BC).  Cicero set out some very clear ideas of justice. His duties of justice had two parts, firstly not doing any harm to anyone unless provoked by a wrongful act, and secondly “using common things as common, private possessions as one’s own.”  So passionate was Cicero about the importance of private property that his idea of justice extended to the appropriate way to behave towards the citizens of a country conquered by war. He felt that there should be a strong commitment to institution-building, and that judicial and property-upholding institutions should transcend national boundaries.  Which sounds much like the programmes of “conditionality” (restructuring, supply-side reform,  privatisation) attached to today’s IMF and World Bank lending facilities. But where Cicero then deals a blow to Material Aid of the direct action type is that he sets out a clear hierarchy of whom justice demands that we should help.    He sets out explicit categories that justify some giving as follows: “the bond of nation and language; of the same state; of one’s relatives; various degrees of familial propinquity; and finally, one’s own home.” And just as explicitly he excludes other nations, on the basis that this is a potentially infinite cohort of recipients [infinita multido].  Now, whether you agree or not with (a) the proposition that Material Aid  is desirable in its own right and (b) that there is currently not enough wealth transfer from rich to poor, it is surely interesting and useful to understand that many of the current arrangement for trans-national relationships have their roots in ideas of justice formed 2000 years ago.
 
The book contains much else of interest, too extensive to enumerate, and still keep the review readable.  Epictetus was a Stoic who extolled the virtues of Socrates as defining everything mankind should know about a philosophical methodology for living one’s life. One of the more difficult essays describes the Socratic discourse in Epictetus’ work. Other essays lead us through the development of Stoic thought over time, from the Middle Ages, to Descartes, to Spinoza. Take what you find useful from these, and discard the rest.
 
Sten Ebbesen in his essay Where were the Stoics in the Late Middle Ages ? says: 
 
“Stoicism is not a sport for gentlemen; it requires far too much intellectual work. Most of Western history consists of gentlemen’s centuries.  But there were the couple of centuries, the fourth and the third BC, in which the ancient philosophical schools were created, and there were the three centuries from AD1100 to 1400, when medieval scholasticism flourished – centuries that produced a considerable number of tough men ready to chew their way through the tedious logical stuff that disgusts a gentleman and to make all the nice distinctions that a gentlemen can never understand but only ridicule, distinctions necessary to work out a coherent, and perhaps even consistent picture of the world.”

 If that is indeed the prize on offer, then perhaps we as gentlemen should consider whether we might want to invest a little more time and effort to look into this abit more.

There is no Wikipedia entry for this book. 

Here is the link to Google Books entry.

My one liner: Arguably, even exceptional people can only ever expect to achieve 55% of what they want in life.  A dip into the 18th century philosophy of Voltaire can help us understand why.

Here’s a basic hypothesis for life outcomes. Bear with me on this, as those of you who know your Voltaire are going to say I’m straying far too far off the reservation…

Imagine that the outcomes that happen to an individual person in life are determined by 80% “world events” which are outside of his control and 20% “specific performance” which is within his control (comments please, on the percentage split).  [as an aside, anyone in finance will recognise the parallels with “market” and “specific” risk – presumably (??) the world in general operates like this, not just stock markets]. 

And let’s say that on average, half of “world events” are “good” ones for a particular individual, and half of them are “bad” ones.  So, your life outcome from “world events” is 40.  And let’s say on individual performance, a person thinks he is a “10-15”, say 15 for the high achievers amongst us.  So, add them up, and even a high achiever only gets to 55, on average.  If events always go his way, he gets to 95, and if events always go against him, he gets to 15.  But his expectation is 55.

Some faiths interpret “world events” in that model above as “Fate”.  The faiths typically differ as to what Fate implies.  The Judeo-Christian / Abrahamic tradition basically says that if you live a virtuous life then divine intervention tilts Fate in your favour. The Buddhist / Hindu tradition says that you can only escape the clutches of Fate through a process of self-realisation; otherwise your Fate is written, and that’s it.

Where on this line does Voltaire site in the tale of Zadig ? Hard to say, but I think he is undecided.  Zadig is frustrated that in his own eyes he is virtuous, wise, and makes good decisions (he probably rates himself as a 20), and yet his outcomes do not always reflect this. 

“Zadig, avec de grandes richesses, et par conséquent avec des amis, ayant de la santé, une figure amiable, un esprit juste et modéré, un cœur sincère et noble, crut qu’il pouvait être heureux. ”

“As Zadig was immensely rich, and had consequently Friends without Number; and as he was a Gentleman of a robust Constitution, and remarkably handsome; as he was endowed with a plentiful Share of ready and inoffensive Wit: And in a Word, as his Heart was perfectly sincere and open, he imagin’d himself, in some Measure, qualified to be perfectly happy.”

Some outcomes for him are simply due to bad luck, and he does try to pick himself up:

“Tout ce que j’ai fait de bien a toujours été pour moi une source de malédictions, et je n’ai été élevé au comble de grandeur que pour tomber dans le plus horrible précipice de l’infortune. ”

“All the Acts of Benevolence which I have shewn, have been the Foundation of my Sorrows, and I have been only rais’d to the highest Spoke of Fortune’s Wheel, for no other purpose than to be tumbled down with the greater Force.”

Others are, sorry Zadig, of your own making, as you do like to chase the girls a bit:

“Qu’est-ce donc que la vie humaine ? O vertu ! à quoi m’avez-vous servi ? Deux femmes m’ont indignement trompé ; la troisième, qui n’est point coupable, et qui est plus belle que les autres, va mourir ! ”

“What is this mortal life ! O Virtue, Virtue, of what Service hast thou been to me ! Two young Ladies, a Mistress and a Wife, have prov’d false to me; a third, who is perfectly innocent, and ten thousand Times handsomer than either of them, has suffer’d Death, ‘tis probable, before this, on my Account !”

So you probably aren’t as close to a 20 as you think you are.

It is not revealing too much to say that in the end Zadig reaches his goal of happiness.  But he has to go through some trials and tribulations to get there.  He kills some Egyptians in Egypt whilst defending a maiden’s honour.  Though his defence is accepted, the law says that he must nevertheless become a slave:

“Les Egyptiens étaient alors justes et humains.  Le peuple conduisit Zadig à la maison de ville. On commença par le faire panser de sa blessure, et ensuite on l’interrogea, lui et son domestique séparément, pour savoir la vérité. On reconnut que Zadig n’était point un assassin : mais il était coupable du sang d’un homme : la loi le condamnait à être esclave.”

“The Egyptians at that Time were just and humane.  The Populace, ‘tis true, hurried Zadig to the Town Gaol; but they took care in the first Place to stop the bleeding of his Wounds, and afterwards examin’d the suppos’d delinquents apart, in order to discover, if possible, the real Truth.  They acquitted Zadig of the Charge of wilful and premeditated Murder; but as he had taken a Subject’s Life away, tho’ in his own Defence, he was sentence’d to be a Slave” as the Law directed.”

He becomes the slave of an Arab merchant Setoc; the merchant realises over time that Zadig has skills way beyond those of an average slave and they become friends.  A taste of Voltaire’s wicked humour, in reference to Zadig’s womanising tendencies:

“Sétoc enchanté fit de son  esclave son ami intime.  Il ne pouvait pas plus se passer de lui qu’avait fait le roi de Babylone ; et Zadig fut heureux que Sétoc n’eût point de femme. ”

“Setoc, transported with his good Success, of a Slave made Zadig his Favourite Companion and Confident; he found him as necessary in the Conduct of his Affairs, as the King of Babylon had before done in the Administration of his Government; and lucky it was for Zadig that Setoc had no Wife.”

Zadig is given back his freedom and continues on his quest to find Queen Astarté, the former queen of Babylon with whom Zadig had fallen in love while he was in the employ of the King.  As a result they had both been forced to flee the Kingdom. 

Zadig’s new found happiness at being freed from slavery does not last long.  He makes his way back to Babylon, where he finds that Astarté has been reinstated as queen and that a competition is underway to find a queen for her. Zadig enters the competition, which takes place between four warriors dressed in full armour, and having anonymous identities.  He wins, but before his identity is revealed his armour is stolen by one of his rivals, and Zadig is therefore eliminated from the competition. 

His final journey (a parallel to the “40 days”) takes him back into the wilderness.  Here he meets hermit who eventually reveals himself to be the Angel Jesrad.  The hermit teaches Zadig that his destiny is beyond his control, and that Evil is a necessary counterweight to Good:

“Les méchants…sont toujours malheureux : ils servent à éprouver un petit nombre de justes répandus sur la terre, et il n’y a point de mal dont il ne naisse un bien. ”

“The Wicked…are always unhappy.  Misfortunes are intended only as a Touch-stone, to try a small number of the Just, who are thinly scattered about this terrestrial Globe: Besides, there is no Evil under the Sun, but some Good proceeds from it.”

As an example, the hermit kills a 14-year-old boy by drowning him, explaining to Zadig that had he not done so, the boy would have killed his aunt, and indeed Zadig himself.  So, Voltaire thinks that Fate can indeed be altered by divine intervention.  The Angel tells Zadig that his destiny lies back in Babylon, and suggests that he go back there. 

Which he does.

And this time he truly finds the “Happiness” that he is looking for (read the book to find out how). 

So who is Zadig ? He is a philosopher, wise man and warrior living in the ancient kingdom of Babylonia.  Voltaire tells his story through Zadig’s reflections on the nature of Mankind:

“Il se figurait alors les homes, tels qu’ils sont en effet, des insectes se dévorant les uns les autres sur un petit atome de boue.”

“He then reflected on the whole Race of Mankind, and look’d upon them, as they are in Fact, a Parcel of Insects or Reptiles, devouring one another on a small atom of clay.”

His journey is one of self-discovery, that starts with the naivety of his own moral standpoint:

“Zadig voulut se consoler, par la philosophie et par l’amitié, des maux que lui avait faits la fortune.”

“As Zadig had met with such a Series of Misfortunes, he was determin’d to ease the Weight of them by the Study of Philosophy, and the Conversation of select Friends.”

There is historical and cultural interest in the book too.  We think today of cities in the Arab world which have become trading hubs where merchants from all over the world congregate.  But it was no different in ancient times too, for example this reference to what is now known as Basra in modern Iraq:

“Il lui paraissait que l’univers était une grande famille qui se rassemblait à Bassora.  Il se trouva à table dès le second jour avec un Egyptien, un Indien gangaride, un habitant du Cathay, un Grec, un Celte, et plusieurs autres étrangers, qui dans leur fréquents voyages vers le golfe Arabique, avaient appris assez arabe pour se faire entendre.”

“It appear’d to him as if the whole Universe was but one large Family, and all happily met together at Balzora.  On the second Day of the Fair, he sat down to Table with an Egyptian, and Indian, that lived on the Banks of the River Ganges, an inhabitant of Cathay, a Grecian, a Celt, and several other Foreigners who by their Frequent Voyages towards the Arabian Gulf, were so far conversant with the Arabic Language, as to be able to discourse freely, and be mutually understood.”

And we get some examples of Voltaire’s deliciously wicked humour:

“Zadig éprouva que le premier mois du mariage…est la lune du miel, et que le second est la lune de l’absinthe.”

“Zadig found, by Experience, that the first thirty Days of Matrimony… is Honey-Moon; but the second is all Wormwood.”

So, does Voltaire truly think that Fate, or “World Events”, as I put it earlier, is the only determinant of our life outcomes ? Well, I am not so sure that he does.  I think he is not sure, and he leaves a few doors open, to suggest that we can tilt outcomes in our favour.  By portraying the story of Zadig as a journey, Voltaire seems to be suggesting that it is Zadig’s learning and understanding of his own capabilities which evolves. 

Taking the analogy at the start of this article a little further, maybe Zadig starts off as 10/20 even though he thinks he is a 20/20.  And perhaps it is his journey and experiences which bring him to being a 15/20.

The English version of this book is a 1749 translation produced for New Bond Street booksellers John Brindley.  I can find no reference to who actually produced the translation.  The book is available for free in French here and in English here via the Project Gutenberg.  The Wikipedia link to the book is in French here and English here.

My one liner: Simplicity. Austerity and the subtraction of the non-essential. Quietude and stillness. Asymmetry and Seductive Imperfection. Naturalness without artifice. Subtlety and Suggestion.  Incremental improvement produces immense change in the long run.  Told as a fable, this book provides a nice template for self-review.

Ok, so maybe you have or haven’t read Shibumi, the 1979 fictional thriller by Trevenian, reviewed in my previous posting, here. 

Nevertheless, The Shibumi Strategy by Matthew May is a very easy read.  You can easily get through it in a day, and get the main message. And it is one of the better books aimed at the business executive self-help market. 

A reminder: What is Shibumi ? It is one of a number of Japanese words, denoting the aesthetic of simple, subtle, and unobtrusive beauty.  Yet, although Shibumi objects appear to be simple overall but they include subtle details, such as textures, that balance simplicity with complexity.  The same can be applied to our personal development, as strive bit by bit for self improvement and awareness of the world around us.

Andy is a tele-sales executive for an electronics company in a small town in Middle America.  He gets fired. 

On his way home he decides that he needs to do something, anything, so that he can soften the blow for his family when he tells them that evening.  So he goes off to the car dealership run by his friend, Grady Carver, and manages to land a commission-only job selling cars, starting immediately, and with some pretty tough targets.  Not ideal, as Andy has never sold a car in his life.  Doesn’t know the first thing about cars.  But, it is a starting point.

This is a fable about Andy, as he goes from no-hoper to (yes, you guessed it) star salesman at Mainstreet Motors.  Follow him through his ostensibly disastrous first few weeks at the showroom, as he crafts a sales strategy rather than waiting for customers to randomly walk through the door, as was happening before.

The book is peppered with inspirational quotations from people you may or may not know.  A bit tacky, but there is a thread:

“It is when things go hardest, when life becomes most trying, that there is greatest need for having a fixed goal.  When few comforts come from without, it is all the more necessary to have a fount to draw on from within.”  BC Forbes

“He who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows out the plan, carries on a thread which will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.  The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all the affairs.  But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos.” Hugh Blair.

One of Andy’s mentors in Mainstreet Motors is Axel (who, yes you guessed correctly again, works in the service area, repairing cars).  Axel is married to Mariko, who is of Japanese origin, and runs a martial arts and yoga classes attended by Andy’s family.  Andy is persuaded to attend, and his corporate journey runs parallel to his Zen journey, in which he learns some of the Eastern philosophies that he puts  into practice in his daily life.

Axel teaches Andy about the “After-Action-Review” (AAR) developed by the US Army.  It is now used as a verb, e.g. after a particular deployment, the military will make sure they “AAR-ed” it.  It boils down to three questions:

-         What was supposed to happen ?

-         What actually happened ?

-         Why are there differences ?

After I stopped sniggering about Iraq, I realised this is quite an effective self-analysis tool, because it is very easy to do on a small scale.  You can apply it to small incidents which didn’t go according to plan.

Remember, the whole philosophy of Shibumi is incremental improvement.  Indeed, in the book, Axel persuades Andy to keep a “Performance Journal” – “You keep monitoring and reviewing your performance and satisfaction, feeding back from actual outcomes to expectations.  Over time trends and patterns show up that point out strengths and weaknesses.”

The trick is to spot opportunity when others see adversity. 

“Two shoe salesmen were sent to Africa in the early 1900s to scout the territory.  One telegraphed back: “Situation hopeless. Stop. No one wears shoes.”  The other telegraphed: “Business Opportunity. Stop. They have no shoes.”” Anonymous.

And this one, by Pablo Picasso:

“Guess how I made that head of a bull.  One day, in a rubbish heap, I found an old bicycle seat, lying beside a rusted handlebar... and my mind instantly linked them together.  The idea came to me even before I realised it.  I just soldered them together.”

Right, that’s enough quotes.  You will learn about Kanso, Koko, Seijaku, Fukinsei, Datsuzoku, Shizen, and Yugen, which are the principles set out in the one-liner at the top. 

And the good thing: it is like an à la carte menu – you can pick and choose the dishes.

There is no Wikipedia link to this book.  The link to the author’s homepage is here.

My one liner: Comparable to (better than ??) Le Carré and Forsyth.  A Japanese philosophy-way of life, as practiced by a stateless assassin who is the hero of the book. And remarkably prescient about technology, terrorism, business and geo-politics.

Trevanian is one of the pseudonyms of Rodney William Whittaker, an author of several genres of fiction during the 1970s and 1980s.  Reading Shibumi over thirty years after it was first written was an interesting experience for the fact that it seems to foretell a number of events and technologies that nowadays have more fin-de-siėcle associations. 

The 1970s version of the Google Algorithm and Social Media all rolled into one is “Fat Boy”, a giant supercomputer run by the Mother Company (you need to read the novel to find out what that is): “Fat Boy contained a medley of information from all the computers in the Western World, together with a certain amount of satellite-stolen data from Eastern-bloc powers...It contained the most delicate information and the most mundane. If you lived in the industrialized West, Fat Boy had you...Programming facts into Fat Boy was the constant work of any army of mechanics and technicians, but getting useful information out of Him was a task for an artist, a person with training, touch and inspiration.”

On terrorism and geo-politics, the novel “pre-calls” 9/11, centering as it does around a plot by Islamic terrorists to down an airliner (Concorde, in this case). Some healthy torture by occupying forces. And there is a distinctly post-Cold War feel to the vested business interests, both Western and Arab, colluding to control the world’s oil supply, together with other forms of renewable energy, whilst unashamedly polluting the planet.  Torture and oh yes, the demise of Concorde as a commercially viable operation is perfectly forecast.

What is Shibumi ? The term is a Japanese word, often used in the context of gardens or architecture, to connote an understated beauty.  As applied to human qualities, it is harder to explain. I won’t be able to paraphrase, so I will quote the novel. Shibumi indicates a “great refinement underlying commonplace appearances...understanding rather than knowledge...modesty without pudency...in art...it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity...in philosophy...it is spiritual tranquillity that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming...Authority without domination.” 

Nicholai Hel, the hero of the novel, resolves to strive for Shibumi at a very young age. For those familiar with Ayn Rand, there is something of the Howard Roark in Fountainhead about Hel’s austere individualism, about striving for excellence when all around him are pushing for mediocrity.

Hel was brought up in Shanghai in the 1930s. His biological father is of German and Hapsburg stock, and his mother is a Romanov Russian, Alexandra Ivanovna, who fled the revolution and became a Shanghai socialite, and who throws out the father as she has no intention of getting married.  Hel receives a classical multi-lingual artistocratic education, and his mother even allows him to become highly skilled in pure mathematics as she is told that, in the aristocratic tradition, it has no commercial value. Hel complements this by escaping during the night and hanging out with Chinese street-kids.

The Japanese invade Shanghai, and one General Takashi is billeted to take over the mansion in which Ivanovna is staying.  He agrees to let her stay on, and after her sudden death, he becomes the father figure to Hel.  Primarily he trains Hel in the Japanese game of Gō (“What Gō is to philosophers and warriors, chess is to accountants and merchants”). Indeed when the Second World War breaks out, Takashi sends Hel (now Nikko, not Nicholai, because of the Japanese difficulty with the ‘l’) to Japan to train in Gō with Takashi’s close friend and Seventh Dan Gō player and teacher Otake-San. Through Gō, Hel learns strategy, tactics, and the art and science of combat. 

And we also get an early sense in the young Hel, of what will drive and define the older Hel: “ the egoism of a young man brought up in the knowledge that he was the last and most rarefied of a line of selective breeding that had its sources before tinkers became Henry Fords, before coin changers became Rothschilds, before merchants became Medici.”  And what more vivid personification of the parasitic “merchant” class than the Anglo-Saxon West, and in particular the United States of America ?  The country which also flattened Hiroshima, where the love of his life was living at the time.

Post-war Japan is brought to life through the eyes of Hel, the principal occupying forces being America and Russia.  Japanese finesse, culture, art and history is rapidly Americanised, and much of its former subtleties are sacrificed.  The Russians are not much better, and it is clear that the post-war years were essentially a dirty carve-up between the West and the Soviet Bloc.  Hel is stateless, and has no papers.  Although he manages to get some fake ones for a while, and works as a code breaker for the Americans.  But eventually US-Soviet politics intervenes, and a chain of events sees him tortured and kept in solitary confinement for three years, for no particular good reason.

Fast forward to the late seventies, and Hel has a new nemesis. 

By this time he has carved out a successful career as a highly paid assassin and is now in retirement at his castle deep in Basque Country.  He tends to his garden and his concubine Hana (the “Dominique Francon” to Hel’s “Roark”).  He has become an expert caver and spends his days exploring the deepest caverns with his close and hearty friend Beñat Le Cagot.

He is popular in the area, and is well-protected. It is surely impossible for anyone to get near his castle without everyone in every neighbouring village knowing.

The attraction of this novel is that you feel Hel to be the hero, despite his occupation.  We are the product of our upbringing, and our circumstances, and it makes you realise that it is possible to forgive someone, or understand someone, if society has totally cut them out. A blond-haired man of aristocratic birth who completely absorbs Eastern philosophy.

“Your scorn for mediocrity blinds you to its vast primitive power.  You stand in the glare of your own brilliance, unable to see into the dim corners of the room, to dilate your eyes and see the potential dangers of the mass, the wad of humanity...You cannot quite believe that lesser men, in whatever numbers, can really defeat you. But we are in the age of the mediocre man. He is dull, colourless, boring – but inevitably victorious...The roar of the plodders is inarticulate, but deafening.  They have no brain, but they have a thousand arms to grasp and clutch at you, drag you down.”

Back to the nemesis. Well, without revealing too much, you can imagine that Fat Boy has something to do with it.  In addition, there is a debt of honour Hel owes to an old Jewish friend of his, Asa Stern, that he must repay to Stern’s niece, Hannah.  But those darned energy big business interests have other ideas.  The denouement takes us to London, and an English country house, and then back to the Basque territory so familiar to Hel for the final showdowns. 

Overall, lots to learn from this book, not least, in the tradition of Shibumi, an appetite to explore more, and get a deeper understanding of the practice of self-improvement.  Namely, how in our real lives can we strive to attain the equilibrium of “casual elegance” ?  For that I would recommend you read “The Shibumi Strategy” by Matthew E. May, also reviewed on this blog page, here.

The Wikipedia link to Shibumi by Trevenian is here.

Amartya Sen - The Idea of Justice (2009)

My one liner: Nobel Prize winning economist.  A comprehensive survey of the great theorists' competing notions of justice, concluding that a system based on Social Realism (or taking society as it is) is preferable to constructing institutions of justice in a vacuum (“Transcendental Justice”).  
 
Framing the debate on the nature of justice, Amartya Sen provides a practical illustration, which he calls Three Children and a Flute, in the Introduction of the book: Imagine which of three children Anne, Bob and Carla should get a flute about which they are quarrelling.  Anne claims the flute on the grounds that she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob, on the other claims the flute because he says that he is the only one of the three who is so poor that he has no toys of his own, so the flute would give him something to play with. Carla then intervenes and says that it was she who made the flute with her own painstaking labour, and just as she finishes her work “these expropriators came along to try to grab the flute away from me.”
 
It is clear that theorists of different persuasions would give the flute to different
candidate.  The economic egalitarian would give it to Bob, on the basis that poverty and inequality should be reduced.  The utilitarian hedonist “would face the hardest challenge”, but would be persuaded to give it to Anne, as her pleasure would be greatest from owning and playing it (though he would recognise that Bob’s incremental pleasure in owning it may outweigh this).  The libertarian would of course have no hesitation in awarding it to Carla.  
 
Amartya Sen’s credentials in leading us towards new theories of justice are of course impeccable, so this is a book that we have to pay attention to.  “Transcendental Justice” is the term he gives to the theories, which seek
to prescribe an institutional framework to the ideal form of justice, a sort of
build-it-and-they-will-come approach. Sen uses the work of John Rawls as his "departure point".  Sen was a student of Rawls, and whilst he acknowledge Rawls’ contribution to modern thinking on justice, he also considers it to be too rigid.  Rawls’ concept of “Justice as Fairness” is centered on a requirement of  “primordial equality”, namely that the “parties involved have no knowledge of their personal identities, or their respective vested interests, within the group as a whole.  Their representatives have to choose under this ‘veil of ignorance’”.  The primordial equality requirement then goes on through a chain of reasoning to determine the types of institutions that would be required to deliver it.

 Sen is more drawn to the “Social Realisation” school of justice. This is more concerned with justice as resulting from “actual institutions, actual behaviour and other influences.”  These concepts are to found in Smith, Condorcet, Bentham, Wollstonecraft, Marx, and Mill. In Sen’s words all of these thinkers, though having very different ideas about the demands of justice were “all involved in comparisons of societies that already existed or could feasibly
emerge”.
 
Sen is able to draw on Indian notions of justice, both from Sanskrit texts on jurisprudence and also from the Hindu epics of the Bhagavad Gita and the Mahabharata. So in Sanskrit literature, niti and nyaya both stand for justice.  Niti  signifies organisational propriety (and hence more akin to the transcendental institutionalism) and Nyaya which stands for a comprehensive
concept of realised justice.  And  he draws on examples of Eastern emperors who have come to symbolise one or the other.  Contrast the practical, societally relevant forms of justice practised by both Ashoka (a Hindu) and Akbar (a Muslim) on the one hand, with the much more prescriptive format expounded by Kautilya (a must-read by the way, if you want do a compare and contrast with Machiavelli), the latter having little faith in the ability of his  subjects to make such decisions for  themselves.
 
The arguments that Sen draws us towards are those of Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments.  Smith invokes the concept of an “impartial observer” who can adjudicate on fairness given the world as it is, and who can take into account factors and opinions which are not merely present within the immediate community but which are geographically distant, but nevertheless relevant.  Sen believes that this is a more relevant way to approach justice in an interconnected world in which we grapple issues such as global terrorism and the financial crisis.

 Overall, there is as you would expect real intellectual substance in this book.  But it is highly readable, and more importantly highly relevant for how we think about what constitutes realistic justice.

Here is the Wikipedia link to the book.