From Boer to Broer*

*Or: From an Afrikaner to his Arab Brothers (and Sisters) in the UAE.

You know, the more I read about your country, the more familiar it sounds. I grew up much like you. Our government was good to its people. They made sure that we could afford a decent living and adequate housing. We enjoyed all the trappings of the modern world.

Yet, we took great care in protecting our culture and our religion from the scandalous practices and influences of the secular West. We believed in God, and He was on our side. History was our proof. And we did not want our society to turn into another New York.

Like you, we had very little separation of Church and State. All our leaders were true believers. We had democracy, but that did not matter since we had an overwhelming majority, and therefore no fear. Our rulers were good people and we loved them. There was no need to criticize our government because we trusted them with our lives.

Despite all this, we firmly believed in kindness and tolerance. We never discriminated against non-believers. Our religious teachings in school were just for us. If you were of a different faith, we would respect your feelings and allow you to do your own thing. (We did however feel it was our duty to warn the unbelievers against the dangers of the Catholic Church and the Jews. And although we fought against the Germans, the English made us do so, and we never made much of the holocaust. Because many of us thought that Hitler was actually doing the world a favor).

The press was free. Government control was only indirect. Admittedly, we had censorship. But only the truly offensive was banned - and stuff that was clearly against our national interest. We actually preferred it that way. Why risk the unknown? For what?

Surely there were some mistakes made, we were not blind. But nothing like the rest of the world imagined. We did not mind change, as long as it was at our own pace. And we definitely did not need the rest of the world to tell us how to live our lives. And by golly, we also had domestic help.

I can go on. But I think that you get my drift.

Apartheid was a sin against humanity. We had our nice lifestyle at the expense of untold suffering of others. The fact that we somehow convinced ourselves that the situation was not that bad did not lessen this evil - it aggravated it.

We also were amazingly naïve. We somehow forgot that the world has always changed and it always would. And not in a way most people would hope for.

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Do you think I judge you? I hope not. But we are living much too close to each other these days to say that the opinions we hold are of no consequence to each other.

Just as you might criticize the behavior of Israel towards the Palestinians, the Chinese are still upset with the Japanese; while the American political establishment always hated the guts of Saddam, Osama, Fidel Castro, Saddam, Bananas, and of course Saddam. And anyone else who happens to disagree.

We all notice the splinter in each other’s eyes, but we fail to see our own. Modern science is just now starting to show why we are like this. It is the simple result of how our brains work. We all fool ourselves much more often than we like to admit.

This ability to find fault with other people is also one of the main reasons why a secular form of government works better than a religious one. It protects us from ourselves. The religious outlook always “knows” the answer, while we don’t. In reality, it has very little to do with the sincerity of the people in charge, or what they believe. Strangely enough, secular government makes us responsible for our own actions. Religious government places that responsibility on those in charge.

This “deficiency” also makes us dependent upon each other. Since none of us know the whole truth, we need each other. No matter what we believe, we all make mistakes. I am sure you have heard the saying about smoking – “10 million blue collar workers can’t be wrong”. Well guess what – they were.

Therefore, to assume that the Muslim viewpoint is the only one that is correct is no different from the idea we had when our church leaders claimed support for apartheid in the Bible. It’s not God who is wrong, but us. Through our interpretation of what he wants. (Think about this. I am not trying to belittle your faith.)

I agree, as a good Muslim it is your prerogative to assume that your belief is right and mine wrong. As a Christian, it is my right to hold the opposite point of view. All the while, our Atheist friends are entitled to think we are both going off the deep end.

But we all should be able to agree that knowledge though faith is different from cognitive knowledge. This is why we cannot assume that we know it all. God does not tell us the secrets of the universe just because we are faithful. If we knew everything, we would have all agreed on everything. We would have had no real choice. No, we have to be very careful when we try to impose our beliefs on others. Think of it this way – maybe God made us like this; with all our mental imperfections so that we have to choose based on what is in our hearts foremost – not our minds.

We all need a big dose of reality. It would make us all much more humble. When we realize how little we know, we also begin to understand why we should take great care less we impose our opinions and beliefs on our fellow travelers through time. And why we should grant them the same human rights we like to enjoy ourselves.

Like our Jewish friend Leonard said, democracy is coming - to the USA. Is it also coming to the UAE?

This article was first published on Thursday December 15, 2005

Brain Farts and Donkey Bridges

A great deal of background understanding is often required to successfully convey the original flavor and meaning of a story from another tribe. Without the vibe, much is lost.

On the other hand, it is the unexpected twists and turns that give most tales their appeal. This much seems to be common across all cultures. It is the capability of the human mind to spot the strange and the unconventional that makes the difference.

Most of us appreciate this kind of warped thinking – as long as it is harmless. Unlike the person¹ who became so upset in church that he jumped up and publicly protested his innocence, we seem to know where to draw the line between what is real and what not.

Or do we?

The Cul-de-Sac Conundrum

There is a class of problems that cannot be solved by looking at the facts alone. Often there is insufficient data, some crucial details are missing, there are too many variables to consider, or the system is dynamic and we do not have an adequate understanding to model its behavior. Unfortunately for us, most human problems are of this nature.

Simple multiplication gives us a good example. Although it’s a tedious exercise, most people will be able to multiply 167285276699 by 19965746109787 without the help of a calculator. However, if presented by the problem to split up the number 3339975362477701126953113 into its prime factors, everyone is toast. There simply is no easy way to do so.

Everything we know about securely doing business on the Internet is built around the irreversible nature of this problem. Worldwide we are literally entrusting billions of dollars in transactions to the RSA encryption algorithms used on the web, algorithms which are based upon the non-reversibility of multiplication. Even the US government is in on this one, and uses several methods based upon this same principle to encrypt their classified stuff.²

There is a dirty little secret, though. Until now, no one has been able to prove that no solution for this factorization problem would ever be found. In other words, we are entrusting a large part of our economy, plus our national security, to methods that can at best be presumed safe. No wonder polls show that more than 76% of Americans are religious.³

How we Cope with Reality

Is this a significant oversight? Well it depends.

Very few world governments truly considered large-scale terrorism imminent until 9/11, while it took the threat of SARS to initiate a period of unparalleled cooperation between many different nations.

Risk is a strange animal. As long as we can consider our chances statistically, very few people will have a problem with the fact that airplanes fall or that bad things happen. Under risk of catastrophe we have traditionally bundled things such as earthquakes and hurricanes, but totally ignored the unthinkable such as terrorist acts, total system failures, or major environmental disasters.

Those things happen to other people, not to us. When it becomes clear that we are next, our mindset changes significantly and we tend to take immediate action. The story about the guy who misunderstood the sermon as a personal attack appeals to our sense of humor when we hear it for the first time. However, the joke’s off when our own future is at stake.

As these examples indicate, we are selective in what we consider important enough to warrant our attention. Living in a reality that contains more variables than we can possibly consider, we are forced to judge and to choose based upon insufficient data. It comes with the territory.

Deliberation and Learning

Although we have no choice in the matter, we are built for this. Our brains have an uncanny ability to make sense of our surroundings, and to act upon insufficient data. Foremost amongst our survival traits, is our ability to panic and to flee.

But whereas animals and even insects can learn through simple association, humans routinely take this ability a whole lot further. Almost effortlessly, we can construct links between existing knowledge and new information, resulting in the new data being remembered much easier. No wonder the Internet has been such a success – it has been a natural extension of how our brains work anyway.

Beyond learning, in humans the novel association of concepts in new and fresh ways also leads to humor and to creativity. These emerging properties of the human mind are what make us so different from our tree-bound relatives.

Logic and Faith

We trend to do things a bit differently when it comes to “real” life, where we have to judge and choose based on incomplete evidence and rely on our limited insight and reasoning ability. Here things are much more serious, and we do not find fresh thinking nearly as appealing as in environments conducive to comedy, art or learning.

Sure, we invite new theory - subject to peer review (in the sciences), or from people we trust (in business) – but credibility is everything. It takes a long time to build, and it can be very quickly lost. Once your credibility is shot, you can forget any future contributions to the human race. Then you will have to take your rightful place amongst the sinners and the outcasts of modern society.

The Need for a New Kind of Business Intelligence

But here’s the rub: Just like the pilots of Spaceship One, we have to fly without knowing if it’s truly safe to do so. That is the paradox we are all faced with – it is dangerous to be alive. After all, one could perish.

The same thing applies to business. We have to plan and act, even though we are unsure if our strategies will get us where we hope we are going. For that very reason, some have developed tools⁴ to help us measure and correct our flight paths as we go.

But one thing still appears missing from most of our modern business landscape – the ability to be self-critical. Maybe that is why so many Martha Stewarts and Kenneth Lays land in hot water. It is highly unlikely that they are so much worse than the rest of us; they are just the few who got caught. (Be careful now, before you pick up that stone...)

Wisdom is hard won. Private as well as business knowledge comes at a price. And it takes us a long time to sort out what is important and what not. Maybe that is why we find it so hard to consider unfamiliar options.

As global change accelerates, so the need increases to find alternate ways to do business. But we are hampered by our very nature, and are loath to consider stuff that question and contradict our own set of beliefs. Not that long ago our society thrived through the banding together of the like-minded, while we enslaved others.

Today it is well understood that we can actually make more money if we hire people of diverse cultures and backgrounds. Business is global, so this physical diversity is helpful. It also brings diverse opinions and modes of thinking. Some of which we are not always at ease with.

If only they knew. If business would have paid some attention to such thoughts and insights they could have made some serious money. There would have been no large Internet brokers if Merrill Lynch was not asleep at the wheel, neither would Kodak have taken so long to embrace digital photography. And Xerox…mercy…will there ever be any hope? At least, IBM belatedly understood when it embraced the Open Source movement. But will the entertainment industry ever comprehend that it is setting itself up for failure by threatening it’s own clients?

As Christensen⁵ has shown, in spite of our best efforts (often because of our best efforts) we fail to see the disruptive innovations that could harm our business. Maybe its time that we appoint a few people to ask those questions we always seem to fail to ask ourselves. To stir up the pot: The hoi polloi versus the subject matter experts.

The same kind of thinking that makes us laugh is what we are so desperately in need of today. It is time that we reappoint the court jester – to the Corporate Strategy Team. And we need to find ways to really mine the creativity of our employees.

The answer has been working for us - but it knows that it’s still unsafe to speak. When our employees are finally able to tell us what’s on their minds, no matter how strange that might sound - only then we will be able to compete in the business of tomorrow.

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Notes:

1. This is apparently a true story. During this particular sermon the minister was talking about the sinful nature of man, when it all became too much for the poor gentleman. He jumped up, accused the cleric of talking about him, grabbed his coat and left.
2. Just for the record, large numbers can be factored. It is only because our current methods are so crude that we basically have to run through all the possible combinations in order to unlock the keys. Therefore, by arbitrarily adjusting the size of the keys, we can assure that our secrets stay safe longer. Even for the fastest computers we have today, it is quite easy to present them with a problem that will take them 20 years, or more, to figure out!
3. According to the American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS) conducted in 2001, with a sample size of 50,000 Americans.
4. For Instance, the Balanced Scorecard – developed by Kaplan and Norton
5. Clayton Christensen: The Innovator’s Dilemma.
   
   
   Jan Tik
   

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