Lopsided mindsets are asymmetric, and fragile like Whiteouts. They lead to disillusionment.
Fix your Lopsided mindset and One-sided Perception, to Survive the Pandemic.
How Lopsided and One-sided monotone mindsets are destroying our world!
Covid-19 disease and coronavirus in particular, have both clearly exposed the Systemic Immunity of Human organizations. Having already infected over 1 million people as of Apr 2nd, and killing more than 50,000 people, humans who prided in our organizational abilities, have been setback, forced to retreat, lockdown, shutdown and rethink everything we know about our systematic preparedness and collective immunity. The pandemic itself, is just a trigger event, that has managed to highlight and bring to the forefront, the fragility of human systems and practices. In this blog post, I argue that we set ourselves up for failure, by believing blindly, on Lopsided ideologies which have single-point failures inbuilt, in their design. Let me explain.
Lopsided ideologies, their asymmetry and fragility.
I was 15 years old, when India announced liberalization. Soviet Union had already crumbled, so even though INDIA was non-aligned, the only ideology that was promoted without an alternative, was Liberalization over Regulation. The ills of such lopsided policies, are now rearing their ugly head, as the Pandemic is unfolding. Already in INDIA, a lot of private doctors have shut themselves out, and governments (both state and central governments) are scrambling to tackle, mitigate and avert this crisis. The Pandemic is just getting started, and its peak is some distance away. Yet, in the US, within the past 3 weeks, already 10 million people have filed for unemployment. That means private organizations are laying off people, without care or concern for their wellbeing, and abdicating their responsibility towards the society. These are just 2 examples of our lopsided understanding of Liberalization over Regulation, which clearly have single-point failures in-built in them. Governments, who blindly endorsed such lopsided ideologies even within my own life-time, are today announcing Massive Economic Stimulus and Fiscal Relief packages. Profits are privatized but losses are socialized, that statement itself reeks of asymmetry and as Nassim Taleb says any asymmetry leads to Fragility. Now the fear is, we might only have big governments and be lopsided on the other side, with bigger fragilities.
Modern human organizations are riddled with such Lopsided practices.
As noted above, Lopsided idea of valuing Liberalization over Regulation is just one example. We are riddled with many lopsided ideas like valuing reasons over emotions, information over wisdom, credit over savings, analysis over synthesis, individual over social, partisan over bi-partisan, outward-fixes over inner-growth, etc. etc. Trouble is, such blind confidence on monotone systems works great, till the single-point failure occurs. Damages that the failures of lopsided practices inflict are catastrophic in nature. The blind confidence, suddenly leads to a crisis of confidence. People are left disillusioned and disoriented. Disillusion not only leaves people confused and dazed, it’s not benign either. Already struggling with deep scars, people over-compensate for being lopsided and that exerts wrong-influence, in all their future decisions. In his book 21 Lessons for the 21st century, Yuval Noah Hariri addresses disillusionment with the failure of Liberalization, in his very first chapter titled Disillusionment.
Whiteouts — The Disillusion that Pilots dread
Whiteouts are a weather phenomena which pilots dread. The important feature to note is, when snow blankets the entire surrounding with everything white, without room for any contrast, all visual references are lost. Yes, not just blackouts, even whiteouts cause vision loss. That itself speaks of correcting our lopsided notion of WHITE over BLACK. And as per wikipedia,
Whiteouts leads to an inability to position yourself relative to the surroundings. In severe conditions an individual may experience a loss of kinesthesia (ability to discern position and movement), confusion, loss of balance, and an overall reduction in the ability to operate.
This is a metaphor and a lived reality, of how monotones or single-colors (whether white or black), without any other contrasting hue, creates havoc in our lives. The same phenomena unfolds with one-sided or lop-sided ideologies too, they obliterate all our reference points. Whiteout is exactly what has unfolded with the Covid-19 pandemic, which is a blackswan event. It is a once-in-a-century pandemic, which has exposed all our ideologies, systems and practices, which had single-points of failure. We no longer have, any personal-experiential truths to rely on, even within 3 generations of our parents or grand-parents, that can serve or guide us. We are left dispositioned, disoriented and disillusioned, without any GPS references, including our immediate past, very similar to how a whiteout plays out.
Further Exploration: Crossing the lopsided rubicon, by co-holding Modern-Science and Ancient Wisdom.
As the ancient roman wisdom of crossing the rubicon suggests, we have now reached a point of no-return. We have clearly crossed the Lopsided Rubicon.
It’s time for each one of us to examine our own Ambiguity aversions. Aversion to ambiguity may be institutionalized by our education, by our culture, by our professional practices or even because of our personal preferences. Since I, largely deal with Startups and businesses, I would suggest the following specifically to them. Startups or even most businesses now have worsening cashflows, decreasing demand, depleted affordability-of-loss, huge debt burdens, and most importantly indifferent and overcautious customers. Businesses have also clearly crossed the lopsided rubicon, and are at a point-of-no-return. Most startups use EITHER Causation methods with a single-point focus, OR Effectuation methods especially now, to make decisions under uncertainty. As my friend Rajan has written in his post here, it is time to make the switch to Effectuation. But I disagree, as this is, over-compensating. Learn to co-hold BOTH Causation and Effectuation.
Co-holding Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science
In a series of post in the past weeks, here, here and here, I have articulated how Indian ancient wisdom of Advaita can now be put into practice. Avidya is asymmetric understanding, for e.g. like the understanding that light always aids in seeing. Wrong! This is long contested since vedic times. If light is very bright, instead of aiding sight, it can actually make you blind, is it not? Can you look at the Sun directly? NO. That is why, in the modern world we have Ambient Lighting in Smart-phones is it not? Ambient-light means co-holding brightness and darkness, while acknowledging that both have their vices-and-virtues, and hence not being lopsided towards light/dark. Let’s learn to deliberately co-hold Modern-Science and Ancient Wisdom too.
Maker’s Practice: Deliberate practices to embrace ambiguity and co-hold Modern Science and Ancient Wisdom.
Embracing ambiguity and unlearning our aversion-to-ambiguity has clearly worked for 10s-of-thousands of years. When we have no more personal-experiential truths to rely on, even within 3 generations of our parents or grand-parents, we can only rely on ancient-wisdom, isn’t it? Do you have deliberate practices for co-holding Modern Science and Ancient-Wisdom? Have you heard of such practices? If you have not, you should know about Maker’s Practice. Maker’s practice is framework of practices, composed of eclectic sets of ancient-practices with a modern-approach. Maker’s Practice is also a community where fellows help each other. Don’t wait, be a fellow at Maker’s Practice. Leave a comment, write an email (manjunath at catalystor dot com) or call us.
