“I’m very happy I’m an alcoholic—it’s a great gift, because wherever I go, the abyss follows me. It’s a volcanic anger you have, and it’s fuel. Rocket fuel. But of course it can rip you to pieces and kill you.
Anthony Hopkins (interviewed by Miranda Hopkins in The Guardian, May 26, 2018)
Australia’s banks have charged dead people fees, lied and ripped off the elderly. As more “sub-optimal outcomes” are uncovered, what exactly is it that compels good people to do bad things?
The "intellectual dark web" is many things: crusade against political correctness, revolt against conventional beliefs, check on the illiberal left. One thing it is not: new... Deep Blogger MEdia Dragons as old as the sun and the moon ...
On June 3, 1968, radical feminist writer Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and Mario Amaya, art critic and curator, at Warhol's studio. Warhol had this to say about the attack: "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there—I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television—you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television."
Australia’s banks have charged dead people fees, lied and ripped off the elderly. As more “sub-optimal outcomes” are uncovered, what exactly is it that compels good people to do bad things?
By Amanda Hooton
Dr Simon Longstaff is the executive director of The Ethics Centre in Sydney. He was mentioned in testimony before the Royal Commission as an independent ethics observer at Westpac, and he's spent three decades speaking to people who have committed some kind of ethical failure – including many bankers who were involved in the antecedents of the GFC. "What you find when you speak to these people," he explains, "is that when they look back at what they did, and the implications of it, most are quite horrified. And what they tell you with total sincerity is, 'I didn't see it.' And when you ask them why not, their most common response is, 'Because everybody was doing it. That's just the way things were done.'"
Such unreflective practice, he continues, "is a form of conditioned blindness. You lose the ability to think critically about your actions." But how, precisely? Do you just wake up one morning suddenly believing that it's okay to charge fees to dead people?
The reality is exactly the reverse, suggests Elisabeth Shaw, chief executive of Relationships Australia (NSW) and a clinical psychologist with 25 years' experience as a counsellor and lecturer in professional ethics. "It happens very gradually. It's called 'moral fading' – a kind of dilution of moral sensitivity that occurs over time. We can be genuinely good, morally sharp people, but over the course of our lives things take a toll. Life events like divorce, alcohol, mental illness can have an impact – even just exhaustion and habit. And certainly, being in one professional culture for a long time is a real factor. It all combines to blunt our moral radar, so we no longer notice, if you like, when things start to get a bit dodgy."
In an organisation such as a bank, moreover, it's easy to lose the reference points that might help you realise such fading is occurring. "You're in a world that encourages a very narrow focus," continues Longstaff. "The only questions that are encouraged are: 'Is what I'm doing good for my company, my group, my tribe?' Nothing else matters. Things like 'Is it legal? Is it ethically right?' are simply not on the agenda."
Added to this is the collaborative, collective culture encouraged by banks. This seems like a positive thing, but as Shaw explains, "that collegial feeling can easily become collusive. You go to your colleague and say, 'Gee this place is pissing me off. And my boss is corrupt!' And then you feel a bit better because you've got it off your chest. But there's evidence that the more debriefing we do, the more it gets in the way of acting [on problems]." Shaw calls this impediment to action "a failure of moral courage".
Collusive culture can also be intimidating. Recently, one of loans officer Anna Smith's colleagues, a very young woman, refused to break lending laws for an applicant who was a personal friend of their regional manager. The manager threatened the young banker via email, then sent a senior staff member to the branch to apply pressure.
"I literally stood between my colleague and this guy, who was three pay grades and 20 years above her," recalls Smith. "And I said to her, 'If this loan goes wrong, this guy and [our boss] will not support you.'" The young banker refused the loan, as did loan officers at another branch. But the young employee has, says Smith, been subsequently blackballed for other positions in the bank.
Conditioned blindness, narrow focus, moral fading, collusive behaviour. All of these concepts are connected to an overarching idea – a classic of psychological theory – that attempts to explain collective behaviour. It's called groupthink.
The banking culture "encourages a very narrow focus", says Simon Longstaff, executive director of The Ethics Centre in Sydney. Photo: Steven Siewert
The "intellectual dark web" is many things: crusade against political correctness, revolt against conventional beliefs, check on the illiberal left. One thing it is not: new... Deep Blogger MEdia Dragons as old as the sun and the moon ...
Why do people go crazy for sports? Sports fans whose teams win experience almost the same surge of feel-good brain chemicals as the athletes do.
Artist Wacław Szpakowski drew abstract labyrinths, "each one produced from a single continuous line."
Artist Wacław Szpakowski drew abstract labyrinths, "each one produced from a single continuous line."
On June 3, 1968, radical feminist writer Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and Mario Amaya, art critic and curator, at Warhol's studio. Warhol had this to say about the attack: "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there—I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television—you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television."
~Kristine Stiles; Peter Howard Selz (1996). Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: a Sourcebook of Artists' Writings. University of California Press. pp. 345–. ISBN 978-0-520-20251-1. Retrieved January 13, 2013.
Andy Warhol born Andrew Warhola to Slovak parents. Andrew's brother Pavol -Paul was born in Mikó (now called Miková), located in today's northeastern Slovakia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire
Andrew on the cover - Creative director Veronica Ditting describes her favorite magazine covers ↩︎ It's Nice That
A huge camera obscura captures New York in shades of mercury, rust, and verdigris.↩︎ The New York Times
Different Speeds, Same Furies London Review of Books. Long read review of a biography of one of my favourite writers, Anthony Powell
A good cover and
headline is a rare joy and needs to be shared.
Andrew on the cover - Creative director Veronica Ditting describes her favorite magazine covers ↩︎ It's Nice That
A huge camera obscura captures New York in shades of mercury, rust, and verdigris.↩︎ The New York Times
An oral history of A Fish Called Wanda
↩︎ Vanity Fair
A troubled aid program in Indonesia, wracked by corruption, was fixed with a simple solution: postcards.
Goats and Soda
National Geographic recently announced the winners of the Travel Photographer of the Year contest for 2018. You can look at the winners here and the people’s choice awards here.
Based on the available archaeological evidence, researchers had assumed that bread and agriculture developed around the same time. But a recent find in Jordan of a 14,500-year-old flatbread indicates that bread was first made some 4000 years before agriculture was invented.
Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City
Outside – This article certainly has helped my mood – I am a long time follower of BirdsRightsActivist “Barely English, but understandable because it’s written by a bird who fights anti-bird sentiment, and is running for president.” I am adding several more of these recommendations to ensure that I always can check-in while the collies are with me as a blog.
* By Tyler :
It is difficult to express just how good these Gulag short stories are. I would very literally second the blurb by David Bezmozgis:
“As a record of the Gulag and human nature laid bare, Varlam Shalamov is the equal of Solzhenitsyn and Nadezhda Mandelstam, while the artistry of his stories recalls Chekhov. This is literature of the first rank, to be read as much for pleasure as a caution against the perils of totalitarianism.”
That is not blurb inflation. Note that the book is long (734 pp. of stories), and the reading is slow, mostly because the narratives lack redundant information, not because they are clumsy or awkwardly written. It also takes perhaps a few stories to get into the swing of things and figure out how the fictional yet not fictional universe works here. But the content is entirely gripping, and full of social science. You can buy it here. A second volume from this translator will appear in 2019, completing the series.
An earlier version of the work, with a different translation and less complete, was published in 1995. By the way, here is the author’s Wikipedia page.
Have you ever wondered how the contemporary world would react if a masterpiece were dropped into its midst? If your guess was “with a fair amount of indifference unless it was Elena Ferrante and even then it wouldn’t really change anything except give rise to probably what will be a mediocre television series”…well, you were right. For Shalamov, I don’t yet see an Amazon review.