BOOKS:SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSES are usually characterised by their ability to develop sensitive antennae that keep them in touch with the spirit of the times. Really successful businesses have inbuilt radar that alerts them to a change in the public mood before their competitors. Professional market research is the most reliable way to equip your business with this knowledge, but we can also learn from contemporary writers and artists whose antennae are usually sharper than those of the rest of us.
Paying attention to what writers are saying has the added bonus of being a pleasure and can often be personally fulfilling. Therefore, as we approach the Christmas break, Innovation would like to suggest four recent publications that may give you valuable insights into the dazed and confused public mood in this winter of our discontent. I make no apology for the fact that my selection is dominated by philosophers and poets because they can always be relied on to provide the most valuable insights.
MICHAEL FOLEY'S The Age of Absurdityis classified as a philosophical work but don't let that put you off: it's a hugely entertaining rant about one of the more peculiar aspects of our times, the culture of entitlement; of "I must succeed, everyone must treat me well, the world must be easy".
Foley argues that this “musterbation” is a form of self-abuse that is now more widespread than its namesake. He mercilessly targets the most inane manifestations of our times: celebrity culture, “celebrity has now been decoupled from the tiresome prerequisites of talent and hard work”; the whole “positivity” industry with its “life coaches” and fatuous breeziness; the lack of academic rigour, “why bother with science and maths when you can get a degree in surfing and beach management”; and the invention of non-existent illnesses, “Social Anxiety Disorder, previously known as shyness”. He then adds a new illness that may be more familiar: “TCD, a chemical imbalance in the brain that means not meeting deadlines or turning up on time for meetings.”
Like all philosophers, Foley has a serious message for us, summed up in his observation that the problem with the culture of high self-esteem is that it is too often accompanied by low self-awareness. He also has a remedy, replace our obsessive craving for continuous movement, constant company and noise with the holy trinity of S’s – silence, stillness and solitude – on the grounds that true happiness is the partner of contemplation.
CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTSare always worth a trawl if you are trying to make sense of the world. Gary Shteyngart's recent novel, Super Sad True Love Story,set in the near future, is a hilarious look at the consequences of our current obsession with constant bladdering, bleating and tweeting. This novel examines the logical outcome of a generation whose lives are lived in social networks and where words have been replaced by acronyms; OMG, TIMATOV (think I'm about to openly vomit). Telegraph poles are now called "credit poles" and every time you pass one your credit rating instantly pops up in lights informing you and everyone else how much money you currently have. Everyone wears an "apparat" around their necks, presumably a successor to the mobile phone, which contains every conceivable piece of information about themselves and which, of course, can be instantly accessed by everyone else.
So when any of the characters in the novel go into a bar, not only is their credit rating known to everyone else but their “sexual attractiveness” rating in comparison to everyone else’s in the bar is instantly communicated.
Shteyngart’s portrait of the outside world is equally alarming; a dystopian America is crumbling into a Mad Max set; “an unstable barely governable country presenting grave risk to the international system of governance”, according to a worried Chinese official. China is trying to get its money back, Norway already owns large chunks of Manhattan and there’s a 23-million waiting list to get into Canada.
IT'S BACK TOphilosophy for my third choice. Earlier this year a group of Trinity College philosophers decided not to waste the opportunity provided by the economic crisis and published the aptly-titled Consolations of Philosophy: Reflectionsfor an economic downturn.
While not as entertaining as the first two books, it is equally illuminating and is admirably accessible to the lay reader.
The editor, Paul O’Grady, opens by arguing that in a crisis when habitual patterns of thinking are found wanting, people need to stop, think and re-evaluate, and that’s where philosophy can be so important: “A correct understanding of whatever situation one is in is a prerequisite for finding a way out – and one of the chief concerns of philosophy is to get a correct understanding of the deep nature of reality, the fundamental structures which hold in the world.”
Given the fundamental structures don’t seem to be holding up all that well at present, this book is all the more timely. Different philosophies, from Plato in ancient Greece to Rorty in modern America, are examined for insights into our current predicament and not surprisingly no single solution emerges, but there is a suggestion that the unthinking consumerism that has characterised the last few decades will come under increasing scrutiny in the future.
“The current reigning paradigm of human happiness, defined here as consumerism, is false. Not only is it false, it is destructive of both individuals, the society in which it is dominant and, if left unchecked, of the world itself.”
This leads to the questioning of the absolute priority of economic growth as the primary societal objective, an issue which appears to be gaining intellectual respectability and which could have profound implications for business and society in the immediate future. It is also interesting to note that some of the philosophers featured in the book echo a key conclusion of Michael Foley’s: “A life dedicated to the contemplation of pure being is the best possible life.”
NOW THAT WEhave a poet in the Park, it seems appropriate to conclude with Derek Mahon's New Collected Poems, published in a handsome edition by the Gallery Press earlier this year. Mahon, one of our greatest poets, has been casting a cold eye on our little island for more than 50 years and thankfully shows no signs of slowing down. In 1997, just when we were starting to lose the run of ourselves, deluded by dubious data which purported to show that we had passed out the old enemy in per capita GDP, the poet advised us to:
“Ask for a sound mind in a sound body
unfrightened of the grave and not demented
by grief at natural declension; study
acceptance in the face of fate; and if
you want to worship mere materialism,
that modern god we have ourselves invented, I leave you to the delights of
modern life.”
We never took the advice, we never even spotted that in the same volume ( The Yellow Book), years before Facebook and the other social media, he presciently observed: "We lose singularity in excess of illumination."
But it's not too late. In the last poem in the book, a new long meditation which was published separately in the past year titled Dreams of a Summer Night,he provides soothing balm;
“Strangely after the gold rush and the slump
what remains is a great sense of relief.
Can we relax now and get on with life?
Step out and take a deep breath of night air
in peace, not having always to defer
to market forces, to the great hegemony
the global hurricane, the rule of money?
Can we turn now to the important things
like visible scents, how even silence sings?”
There are a surprising number of common themes in these different books, but it would be presumptuous of me to point them out. Bring your own perspectives to bear and who knows what ideas may spring forth.
John Fanning lectures in branding and marketing communications in the UCD Smurfit Business School
