Machine Unlearning
The assembly line is perhaps the most iconic image of the Industrial Revolution. Situated in a cavernous factory, filled with smoke or the din of whirring metal, sweaty workers attend to their machines, drilling or joining the product as it rolls by, each according to his role.
In Becoming Attached, Robert Karen looks through the lens of attachment theory at the psychosocial effects of the Industrial Revolution on individuals and their relationships. Beginning with a description of the centrality of the family unit in preindustrial society, Karen explores the roots of many of the pressures we experience in society today: the pressure to compete and win (along with an emphasis on ambition and the fear of failure), to make your place in the world, to produce more and faster, and to keep moving until you achieve those goals.
Without falling prey to a naive, romantic nostalgia for the past, Karen makes a compelling case that in some ways we have quite naturally become harder and colder—more out of touch with our emotional needs—as we began to go out of the home to work in environments that lacked the familiar connections of preindustrial society. The modern emphasis on emotional intelligence in the workplace is just one response to the loss of the familiar closeness of the cottage industry.
These are not new ideas, and they bring us back to the tension between love and power, community and technology, depicted so aptly in the symbolism of Tolkien’s ring of power or in the Star Wars story. It seems that the exponential rise of the machine and the power it puts in our hands has made it more and more difficult to cultivate community. John Bowlby, the pioneer of attachment theory, added mobility to the list of enemies of community: “In days gone by, people stuck around, they saw a lot of each other. But this business of moving every five years from one place to another is exceedingly destructive.”
As Thomas Wolfe wrote, you can’t go home again. We can’t turn back the clock to the pre-industrial days, so what can we do? Maybe the way forward is a focus not on the home as the unifying principle, nor on the workplace, but on the neighborhood. Perhaps we can create neighborhoods that are more integrated with businesses, where at least some of the people who live physically close to each other can go to work together. If better neighborhoods are a solution to the disintegration, fragmentation, and pressure that so many people experience, let’s ask: what makes a neighborhood good?
Lose a Little
Can the advice of a 4th century desert monk be relevant to someone in the 21st century marketplace? At first, the following bit of practical advice from Evagrius Ponticus doesn’t seem to make much business sense:
When buying or selling you can hardly avoid sin. So in either case, be sure you lose a little in the transaction. If possible it is best to place such business in the hands of someone you trust.
from Asceticism and Stillness in the Solitary Life
You’re probably not going to read something like this in business school. Doesn’t it make good business sense not to compromise on profit margins? Doesn’t “lose a little” feel like allowing someone to take advantage of you?
But there’s at least one way to understand this advice that doesn’t mean compromising on principles:
Generosity.
When you decide intentionally to “lose a little” in the form of a gift you freely give, whether during the transaction or after it, the benefits are numerous.
First and most literally from the saying, generosity helps you avoid sin. If that word doesn’t make any sense to you or if you find it offensive for some reason, skip this short paragraph. There are other benefits. But for those who do attach importance to the concept of sin: the most obvious one from which generosity can help protect us is greed.
Second, generosity can be an expression of thankfulness, without which a certain depth of happiness may not be possible.
Third, generosity is an opportunity to do good not just for ourselves but for others. Why not use sales revenue as an opportunity to give to the charities or non-profits of your choice?
Fourth, generosity builds relationships. It delights the person with whom you are transacting. Chick-fil-A does this to me all the time. I’ve lost track of the number of chicken sandwiches I’ve received as outright gifts or in exchange for my feedback about their products and service.
Sometimes, giving away a product or service—whether your own or someone else’s—can even generate more business. If they like it, they may decide to buy it. This can be a mere sales tactic, of course, but if it’s an act of real generosity, you don’t lose your reward even if more business doesn’t come from it.
Finally, a true gift signals to the other person that there’s a bigger, more important motivation for you than profit. What that is will differ from person to person or from company to company, but in this age of cultural fragmentation, we’re all looking for the others who have the same values we ourselves hold.
Maybe that old monk’s advice is still relevant. You can always try it and see for yourself.
Beyond Trick or Treat
In the folktale Stone Soup, a hungry travel-worn boy comes to a big house and asks the old woman who lives there for something to eat. The old lady says she has nothing to give him. Little does she know that this is a “trick or treat” scenario. The boy replies that if she gives him a stone, he can make soup from that stone. The old lady had never heard of something so bizarre—“Make soup from a stone? Fancy that.”—so she complies with the boy’s request. When the pot of water comes to a boil, she comments, “This soup is cooking fast.” The boy says it would cook even faster with some onions. The old lady throws in a few onions from her garden and soon says, “This soup smells good.” The boy replies that it would smell even better with some carrots.
Unlike the old lady, you probably get the picture now and don’t need the play-by-play account of every ingredient thrown into the pot. You might dislike the boy because he’s a trickster. On the other hand, you might find the story delightful, especially if you feel compassion for the hungry lad who wasn’t given any food by the resident of the big house, or if you think the old lady had a trick coming to her for lying. Regardless of what you think of the folktale, if we strip away “trick or treat” from the plot, we’re left with some powerful ideas:
First is the power of curiosity. It’s the special gift of innocence and childhood, usually dulled by time and experience, and hardened into a protective skepticism. Both curiosity and skepticism are rooted in the fact that there’s so much we don’t know, but curiosity is open to discovery in a way the other isn’t. The old lady could have been skeptical instead of curious. If she had, she might have seen the boy’s trick and shut the door on him. She would have saved herself a few onions and carrots, but she would have deprived herself of something greater.
Once the boy suggests they eat the soup, the old lady says, “Stop! This soup is indeed fit for a king. Now I will set a table fit for a king.” And she takes out her best dishes and tablecloth for their meal. This illustrates another powerful idea: that giving transforms the giver. The soup was not just to the boy’s benefit. It elevated the old lady to a nobler mindset. Generosity, even on the smallest scale, is a quality of kings and queens.
Another powerful idea is that generosity connects us to others. It establishes a relationship, whether we’re on the giving or the receiving end. The boy and the old lady were strangers but ended up sitting down at a table with each other, which reminds me of a beautiful initiative of my alma mater. Without generosity to bring them together, the boy and the old lady would have remained alone.
One last insight from the folktale is that even the smallest gift can make a big difference. That’s good news since no one has unlimited resources. We can’t always give as much as we want to every worthy cause. But if we’re open to being surprised, if we’re open to wonder and curiosity, this attitude can help us open our hands and cast something small—something we can afford to give—into the proverbial pot. And if enough people throw in their onions, carrots, beef bones, salt, pepper, butter, and barley, something magical might happen: we all just might be able to enjoy a bowl of soup fit for a king.