Showing posts with label James Bryce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Bryce. Show all posts

Monday, March 6, 2017

Fake News and Indolence

Now, more so than ever, the wisdom and insight of Viscount James Bryce quietly screams to us. Bryce wrote in 1901, thus-

"To most people, nothing is more troublesome than the effort of thinking. They are pleased to be saved the effort. They willingly accept what is given them because they have nothing to do further than to receive it. They take opinions presented to them, and assume rules or institutions which they are told to admire to be right and necessary, because it is easier to do thus than to form an independent judgement. The man who delivers opinions to others may be inferior to us in physical strength, or in age, or in knowledge, or in rank. We may think ourselves quite as wise as he is. But he is clear and positive, we are lazy or wavering; and therefore we follow him."


Monday, May 20, 2013

Boycotting nonsense

The new Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs has made a major misstep when he merely said that the federal government did not approve of the boycott of Chinese goods and services but proceeded to defend the right to boycott.

Sometimes you can be legally correct but wrong on the economics.

Usually it is not a big deal because everyone knows that political motivations are usually irrational exuberance.

But...when you are a Minister responsible for an economic portfolio as important as Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs you have to be a big picture person. 

You are running the entire Malaysian economy.

You cannot be pandering to petty politicking even if it is just a fortnight since your party won by a whisker. 

You have to check that tribal, petty, parochialism.

You are the Minister in the Malaysian Cabinet with a portfolio to manage Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs.

Malaysia holds itself out as an open economy. Malaysia measures itself by trade competitiveness. Malaysia aspires to obtain foreign direct investments.

For instance, how would the Minister reconcile his defence of racial boycotting to investors and businesses from mainland China or Taiwan? 

Would he say via an interpreter, "Sorry, this boycott of Chinese goods and services apply only to Malaysian citizens of Chinese ethnicity and descent. It definitely does not apply to you people because you are from mainland China/Taiwan".

How lame is that?

Do I need to remind everyone that Cabinet Ministers hold a federal portfolio? 

Do I also need to remind everyone that people cannot be fooled all the time?

You cannot have the Prime Minister himself, Husni, Mustapha, Idris Jala and Wahid running around telling all and sundry that the Economic Transformation Plan is still on foot when your fella in charge of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs cannot send the correct signals out as a Federal Minister and, he is still labouring under the misapprehension that the stupid General Elections is still on.

As I said before, GET TO WORK!

Saturday, December 20, 2008

The downside of Obedience

As an undergraduate I did a research paper on the topic of obedience. I have even done a blog post about this in relation to the works of James Bryce on this issue of obedience. 

One of the controversial works that I looked at was the experiments conducted by a Yale University associate professor Stanley Milgram in 1961. 

Those of us who read academic works voraciously will have noted that British academics have traditionally worked on the basis of a priori arguments that is rooted on specific academic propositions and philosophical principles.

American academics are quite different. They are proponents of quantification. They treat analysis of qualitative issues lightly unless these analyses are backed by solid quantification via experiments and surveys. It was probably in this academic ethos that Milgram conducted his controversial psycho-social experimentation on the issue of obedience.

Milgram's results confirmed what James Bryce had propounded, that people are inclined to obey. The level of obedience is heightened when there is a clear authority figure giving directions. 

Recently, American academic Jerry Burger has conducted an experiment similar to Milgram's. Read the report here.

These experiments and their results not only confirm the propositions of thinkers like James Bryce on the phenomenon of obedience. They also explain the Nazi officers who testified at the Nuremberg trials in the aftermath of World War II that they had merely been carrying out the orders of their superiors in the mass genocide of Jewish civilians in Europe, the Holocaust. If they are to be believed, these Nazi officers were mere automatons who performed their duties mechanically without any pangs of conscience at all.

I wish to end by making this observation. Amidst the current swirl of angry polemics and rants about the self-interests of Malaysia's many ethnic communities on issues ranging from religion to education to race itself, the opinion leaders must exercise restraint and measure their words, verbal and written, with great care. 

This is because the basic proposition is that independent thought is difficult. It is even more difficult if one's mind is not trained to tertiary level where critical thought and analytical thought is taught. The tendency of these minds would, therefore be, to follow the thoughts of opinion leaders. These opinion leaders could be political leaders. They could also be bloggers. If these opinion leaders adopt callous attitudes and choose their words carelessly they run the risk of creating a mob of racists and bigots who are "obedient" to the racist and bigoted words of the opinion leaders. These are tribal behaviours that will endanger the social fabric. The situation will be even more incendiary in a climate of economic turmoil when adversely affected Malaysians will start looking for outlets to vent their anger and frustration.

Where will such a situation lead? To nothing good but everything bad.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Confessions of a risk manager

Those of us who are involved in jobs that require us to advice, counsel or analyse have stories to tell about how the senior management, directors, clients or principals trivialise our input, mock our input or, outright shut us up - as if we are bearer of bad news when, all we are trying to do is to warn these people against being so gung-ho about certain investments or committing so much financial resources or, committing so much borrowings into certain projects or schemes.
How often has it been for you that the rah-rah cheerleading guys in the Marketing and Sales Department prevail over your caution and reticence?
Well, these days it almost feels like the old summer movie of the 1980s, The Revenge of the Nerds!!! Look at how the nerdy accountants red-flagged Oilcorp and Axis? And, looking at the Bank International Indonesia acquisition mess that Maybank has gotten itself into, you wonder how many stories the guys involved in giving risk advice for the deal can tell us.
For those of you who nod your heads as you read this, you will find the article in The Economist very resonant and relevant. For the rest of you, read it for the warning and moral that underlines it. It's the view of a risk manager in an unnamed investment bank that has exposure to the subprime fiasco that has yet to run its full course in the US.
It speaks of a situation that management consultants call groupthink, a phenomenon where particpants in a meeting are overwhelmed by a dominant person or clique. Participants are transformed from individuals into a bovine herd, what Malaysians call a pak turut syndrome, where indolence takes over as described by James Bryce.
This is an interesting morality tale. By the way, it applies with equal force to all the sycophantic political followers who adore their respective leaders and, are prepared to follow them like lemmings (a furry mammal in Europe) rushing over the precipice. Read the article here.
But, to be fair to the cute lemmings, read about the myth of lemming suicide (the metaphor that I used above) and the debunking of that myth here. Anyway, you get the picture, I hope.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The "culture" of Obedience in Malaysia

Although the results of the Malaysian General Elections in March 8, 2008 shows that Malaysian voters and, perhaps, Malaysian Society has reached a tipping point in tolerating the political dominance of Barisan Nasional, there are deep patterns of obedient behaviour that remain.
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I am not saying that we have to be disobedient. I am highlighting one phenomenon of obedience which is INDOLENCE.
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Three factors are offered here. Firstly, the Malay adat is still strongly observed. This is manifested is the daily conduct of the Malay to respect their elders and to defer to their greater wisdom. It is submitted that this attitude also manifests itself towards authority figures such as political leaders. This is a feudal attitude that the Malay community still clings to.
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Secondly, the Chinese traditions of respect to their elders are rooted in the Confucian tradition. This is coupled with the immigrant ethos, echoes of which are very likely to have been passed on to newer generations, to respect the local authority to avoid causing any trouble. Furthermore, contemporary Chinese Malaysian communities are either politically marginalized or content with the status quo of middle-class indolence and apathy. Is this middle-class apathy starting to disappear?
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Thirdly (I stand to be corrected), in orthodox Islam, it has been noted that a citizen has a duty of allegiance to the government. Citizens are, generally, required to be bound “to hear and to obey, in hardship and in ease, in circumstances pleasant and unpleasant” the calls of the government. This is based on the Tradition narrated by the Companion, Ubadah ibn as-Samit, as recorded by Al-Bukhari, as follows:-
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“The Prophet called us, and we pledged our allegiance to him. He imposed on us the duty to hear and obey in whatever pleases and displeases us, in hardship as well as in ease, whatever our personal preference, and [impressed on us] that we should not withdraw authority from those who have been entrusted with it, “unless you see and obvious infidelity [kufr] for which you have a clear proof from [the Book of] God”.
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It is not a simple thing to oppose an established authority. In any event, it is difficult to establish “obvious infidelity” and obtain “clear proof”. Thus, it is submitted, the tendency is to obey.
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I shall let Viscount James Bryce explain it by extracting from his seminal work Studies in History and Jurisprudence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1901)(2 vols). I have placed emphasis in BOLD of passages that deserve particular attention:-

The Grounds of Obedience in General
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Political obedience is not a thing by itself, but a form of what may be called Compliance in general.
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The grounds or motives of Compliance can be summed up under five heads. Putting them in the order of what seems to be their relative importance, they may be described as the following—Indolence, Deference, Sympathy, Fear, Reason. Let us consider each separately.
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By Indolence I mean the disposition of a man to let some one else do for him what it would give him trouble to do for himself. There are of course certain persons to whom exertion, mental as well as physical, is pleasurable, and who delight in the effort of thinking out a problem and making a decision for themselves.
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There are also moments in the lives of most of us when under the influence of some temporary excitement we feel equal to a long succession of such efforts. But these are exceptional persons and rare moments. To the vast majority of mankind nothing is more agreeable than to escape the need for mental exertion, or, speaking more precisely, to choose only those forms of exertion which are directly accompanied by conscious pleasure and involve little fatigue.
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In a great many exertions of thought resulting in determinations of the will there is no pleasure, or at any rate no conscious pleasure, or at any rate no pleasure which is not outweighed by an accompanying annoyance. Such exertions may relate to things in which we have slight personal interest, and therefore no desires to gratify, or to things in which our personal interest is so doubtful that we shrink from the trouble of ascertaining which way it lies, and are glad to shift the responsibility from ourselves to whoever will undertake it for us.
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The ascendency of one of a married couple, for instance, or of one member of a group of persons living together, is usually acquired in some such way. It is not necessarily the will really strongest that in these cases prevails, but the will which is most active, most ready to take a little trouble, to exert itself on trivial occasions and undertake small responsibilities.
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Persons of a resolute and tenacious character are sometimes also hesitating and undecided, because they cannot be at the trouble of setting to work, for the little questions of daily life, their whole machinery of deliberation and volition. In five persons out of six the instinct to say Yes is stronger than the instinct to say No—were it not so, there would be fewer marriages—and this is specially so when the person who claims consent possesses exceptional force and self-confidence.
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In other words, most of us hate trouble and like to choose the line of least resistance. In tropical Africa the country is covered by a network of narrow footpaths, made by the natives. These paths seldom run straight, and their flexuosities witness to small obstacles, here a stone and there a shrub, which the feet of those who first marked them avoided. To-day one may perceive no obstacle. The prairie which the path crosses may be smooth and open, yet every traveller follows the windings, because it is less trouble to keep one’s feet in the path already marked than it is to take a more direct route for one’s self. The latter process requires thought and attention; the former does not.
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Nor is the compliance of indolence less evident in thought than in action. To most people, nothing is more troublesome than the effort of thinking. They are pleased to be saved the effort. They willingly accept what is given them because they have nothing to do further than to receive it. They take opinions presented to them, and assume rules or institutions which they are told to admire to be right and necessary, because it is easier to do this than to form an independent judgement. The man who delivers opinions to others may be inferior to us in physical strength, or in age, or in knowledge, or in rank. We may think ourselves quite as wise as he is. But he is clear and positive, we are lazy or wavering; and therefore we follow him.