Old Men Have Broken our World and then there is Warren Buffet

As an educator I am privileged to meet 20-30 new people every month for their undivided attention for 2 days at organizational development soft-skills training workshops; or 2-4 hours when I am invited to present to universities and think tanks on topics such as mindfulness, business and sustainability.  I get a pulse of what is going on in people's minds through these sessions.  

I began the most recent talk at University of Ottawa 4^th year International Development undergraduates on the topic - Business, Sustainability and Personal Leadership with a Hopes and Fears session.   

I was surprised as there were more fears voiced over hopes – the state of the economy and their future, wars and violence, climate change, corporate irresponsibility, poverty and disparity in the world, and more.  When I asked them whether they had the Power to change any of these, only 3 out of 20+ students raised their hand.  

This is a pattern emerging in the last two years from the many presentations I have made at colleges and universities.

This is disturbing as universities are where political and social change originated through the likes of Flower Power, Black Power, Anti War, Gay Movements and more over the last 75 years.   

Students being stifled through a huge workload, high fees and cost of living, workload and the fear of an uncertain future leaves them with no time to think and be creative.  The very system they should be railing against to improve things to create a better world is stifling them.      

If this is the case, our political leaders, usually "old men", who run this neo-liberal western world have failed this future generation.  Clearly, the government-corporation unholy alliance strengthened since World War II is only working for a few privileged in the democratic world.  The old men in ivory towers seem to not be in touch with the ground realities, even in a prosperous country like Canada.

We cannot generalize on old men though, as there are many wise old men around too.  One shining example is the "Oracle of Omaha", Warren Buffett.  When Duke University surveyed their MBA students for the most influential person, many voted for Buffett, after their fathers.   

I have followed Buffett as a business leader over the years and consider him one of the most emotionally intelligent human beings, and an antithesis to our preconceived image of a billionaire.  Unlike most others, he has always spoken for fair-play over self-interest.

Tap Dancing to Work, Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966 – 2012, an amazing compilation of articles and stories by Carol J. Loomis provide deep insights into this incredible man.    

Another wise old sage J. Krishnamurti, in his The Book of Life says, “Right thinking comes with self knowledge.  Without understanding yourself, there is no basis for thought”.

Warren Buffett embodies self knowledge when he says; “We don’t have the skill to be above all, I guess you would say, we have strong sense of our limitations” of both his partner Charles Munger and himself.  

This makes Buffett a mindful, emotionally intelligent and a rational person with his life’s lessons on a full spectrum - starting from parenting, business leadership, investments, governance and social consciousness.

Buffett humbly says he was born in the right country to the right family at the right time that provided a platform for his success.      

Buffett leveraged this fate by making sound choices based on a set of values and rational thinking.  He is a brilliant intellect and a consummate critical thinker constantly asking questions and testing assumptions, comparing the past with potential new scenarios.  Yet, the most important attribute Buffett has is self-awareness.   

Buffett has built his wealth not by prescribing and controlling others but by managing himself – his integrity, ethics, knowledge, temperament, words, and acts.   

This is emotional intelligence, which enables him to think critically and rationally.  

Our thoughts represent feelings – excitement, confidence, fear, vulnerability, aversion, yearning, sadness manifested by needs, when unmet, gives us stress and anxiety.  Buffett has found ways to detach emotion from the thought process to become extremely rational in his investment decisions and running businesses.  Yet he knows that human relationships enable all this and he is a very sociable person.

His simple tip to making money - “Rationality is essential when others are making decisions on short-term greed or fear.”  Being rational, Buffett runs against the herd.  He buys fundamentally sound investments and when others are getting out of the market out of fear and greed, and holds on to them patiently.

This patience has given him longevity and the consistency.  For a billionaire and owner of so many varied businesses, he leads a very slow life.  He loves to read and learn and does not do email.

Buffett learns a lot from being a consummate reader.  In a speech in 1999 he cited a 1924 book called Common Stocks as Long Term Investments by Edgar Lawrence Smith based on researching stock price movements for 56 years.   

Buffett quotes from the book;

“These studies are the record of a failure - the failure of facts to sustain a preconceived theory”.  

It goes on;

“The facts assembled, however, are worthy of further examination.  If they would not prove what we had hoped to have them prove, it seemed desirable to turn them loose and to follow them to whatever end they may lead to”.    

What he got from this book on stocks is an education on the human mind.  Our natural inclination is to be emotionally attached to myths, ideology, beliefs and generalizations that prejudice and render us powerless, as they embed in the subconscious mind.  He lets go of those old assumptions by thinking critically and getting to the root cause.

I am fascinated by how Buffett learns this psychology from a book on investments and applies it to his practical world. This is highly emotionally intelligent, mindful and aware - a critical thinker par excellence.  

He discovered another interesting corporate phenomenon called the “institutional imperative”. 

 In one of his famous letters to shareholders (1989), he states;

 “In business school, I was given no hint of the imperative’s existence and I did not intuitively understand it when I entered the business world”.   This imperative is the organizational momentum that is resistant to change, the institutionalized inertia protected by the people – the culture of “the way things have been done” – the greatest barrier for rational decision making and action.

Mining Industry on the Old Imperative

I see this imperative at play in the mining industry, for instance, ignoring the risks of not engaging with local and indigenous host communities up front for mutual benefit. 

Power and money enabled the myth in earlier times for  mining corporations with host governments, at times, to do their bidding to get people out of the way, so it can go about its business.  

Faster this myth is done away the less risky it will be for the mining industry, as a few community members aided by an international civil society organization and social media can ruin a company and its reputation.  

Buffett understands the danger of these myths and the inertia of the imperative and learned to work around them.  He picked companies with businesses he understood with quality products and services the market will need for a long time to come.  He stayed away from the high tech world, which he did not understand.

Then he found right people to run them.  “He is the best judge of human talent there is” says Rick Santulli, CEO of Netjets, one of Buffett’s more innovative companies in the shared ownership of business jets.  This is confirmed by all his other company CEOs, who love to work for him.  He is not your alpha- male boss as his personal assistant Debbie Bosnak says, “I have never seen him get mad”.

Krishnamurti says; 

“Self knowledge comes into being when we are aware of ourselves in relationship.”  

Buffett is a self effacing man, manages his emotions well and knows how to relate to people.

He is also one of the few business leaders who think unfair for the rich to pay so little taxes.  He continues to be a voice of reason to take the power away rather than to hoard it, from the wealthy to create a more equitable world.  He is a visionary to realize that an inequitable world is not sustainable.

This reflects his philosophy with his children.  He made it well known from early days that his children will not inherit his wealth.  His family lived a “normal” life in Omaha going to public schools.  The children did not realize their father was one of the richest people in the world till they were in their twenties through the media.  

Buffett’s lifestyle did not change as he earned his wealth.  Instead, both his wife Susan and he were loving “normal” parents who spent time with the children as they grew up.  Buffett once commented; 

"I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing".

All this is an anti-thesis for the caricature of a high powered business leader and there are many rich lessons in Warren Buffett’s philosophy, way of life and business.

Buffett is a shining example of a level 5 leader - humble yet tough - that I cite as I work with business leaders who seek to transform their organizations to be more people friendly.   https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/level-five-leadership.html

"Deep Tissue" change requires unlearning old hierarchical ways to relearn new approaches, yet they are not really new. We know that organizations are living systems, with warts and all, as opposed to a machine.  The art is to find the right balance between enforcement and facilitation for a living system to thrive.  

Self knowledge and mastery, starting at the top, is the key to finding that balance.  A living system has moods, gets buffeted by the winds, gets pushed around - therefore, needs nurture, care and at times, tough love.    

Buffett has been a consummate example of a business leader, who understands the fallibility of it all.  He minimizes these risks by being rational with his deals, but emotionally intelligent with his people, who he chooses carefully.  

He has clearly shown that you do not have to be a mean spirited reptilian predator to become a billionaire.  He can give it all away too, as he is not attached to it, as he was never caught by its trappings.

Warren Buffett is the embodiment of a free spirit who continues to live a mindfully slow life and enjoying it to the fullest.   

This old man is a visionary leader for our times.

“Intelligence comes when one is in harmony both, intellectually and emotionally.  With intelligence, one has both capacities to feel and reason”.  J Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

The Three Books - Reconciling Canada’s Takers and Leavers

Canada, a blessed nation in many ways is at cross roads – to balance the exploitation of natural resources with protecting needs of mostly indigenous people and the environment. Much of Canada’s wealth comes from natural resources situated in and around traditional lands of Canada’s aboriginal people.  As more and more indigenous people assert their rights seeking to protect the lands and get a piece of the economic pie, Canada’s plural and multicultural Values are being tested.

Following on the last article, I weave in the narrative of the three books, Ishmael, The Orenda and Earth to Property, to give us a sense of the history, culture and the evolution of the new material world as the old indigenous and aboriginal world also survived against all odds.  The old world’s survival is a blessing to moderate the new world founded on the notion of a machine designed to produce and sustain human life based on the myth "world belongs to man".  This myth is testing the limits of the planet.  

Ishmael; Daniel Quinn’s philosophical novel, published after he won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship in 1991 was profound. The book is a Socratic dialogue between a teacher and student about ethics, human behavior and sustainability to understand how and where this myth of man emerged.     

Ishmael, the teacher, provokes the student to inquire into homo sapien’s divergence from a nomadic hunter gatherer life style (called Leavers) to possess and farm the land (becoming Takers).  

Takers encroach, dominate and destroy the Leavers (as Abel destroyed Cain) and other species in the competition for resources.  In the Taker’s myth, man dominates nature as opposed to “man belongs to nature”.

Man evolved to think and reason – “Why suffer the vagaries of nature, when I have the rational thinking skills to control nature?”.  

In notionally taking control, man possessed land to cultivate, to control the food supply and eliminated anything that impeded this quest.  So Takers exterminate competition starting with the pests in the fields, whereas Leavers do not.

Leavers kill only for necessity - food for sustenance or for self-defense.  Leavers thrive in diversity and do not kill to destroy as Takers do.

Ishmael challenges the student to question man’s myth of dominance, as when nature’s laws are broken there is bound to be consequences.

Boyden

 

Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda, an epic story of a meeting of two vastly different cultures - The European and the Aboriginal - in the founding days of 15^th century Canada relates well to this Taker – Leaver narrative.  

The story set among the seemingly brutal avenging war between the Iroquois and Huron nations with Jesuit missionaries from France a midst – I was startled by the violence in the opening chapters, I stopped reading it.  

It bothered me that I could not endure this story, which my Eastern self knew had deeper meaning, but my Western judgmental self was getting in the way. 

I reflected on it, as I kept on reading Ishmael, when I came across;

“....The Leaver peoples on that map were not an imaginary boundary, but a cultural boundary.  If the Navajo people got too crowded, they could not say to themselves; Well the Hopi have a lot of wide open space, let us go over there and become Hopi’.” 

Laws of nature made it unthinkable to cross these cultural boundaries. Doing so had risks and consequences – of getting captured and killed even as The Orenda was playing out.  This, according to Ishmael was the way Leavers limited their own population growth so the ecological diversity for the sustenance of the earth continue. There was a larger purpose.

Human population - as Takers destroy its competition, will grow unabated, which according to Ishmael is our planet’s undoing, as it creates an imbalance in it's biodiversity. 

Serendipitously, I was listening to the radio when Canada Reads was on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Jian Ghomeshi show – when the eminent Stephen Lewis remarked on the violence and torture in The Orenda as pornographic and missing an opportunity to rally the nation to reconciliation.  I sat uncomfortably with that judgment by someone I respect as a Canadian thought leader. 

Source:Penguin

Aboriginal activist and journalist Wab Kinew's impassioned response resonated with me as he focused on the distinctly different worldviews. “Violence is the key to understanding this message” Kinew said, as I pondered on the Taker (western) pulpit from which we judge the way of life and culture of these Leavers (aboriginal people). 

Defending honor and dignity through torture and violence is an integral part of aboriginal culture when it is appropriate.  

Kinew’s description of his own annual Sundance ritual going for 4 days without food and water in a trance becoming one with nature is at odds with my Western rational self.  However, I accept it from my Karmic interconnected universe of the East.  

Kinew asserted at the end; “Reconciliation is the greatest social justice issue for Canada and this must not be a second chance at assimilation.  Canadians have to be challenged and unsettled out of their comfort zones to understand this”.    

The reality is that 21^st century technologies are exposing the many distinct worldviews and cultures inhabiting the earth.  

After all, attempts to annihilate or assimilate the aboriginal communities in Canada failed.  I am excited for Canada hearing this from an assertive aboriginal voice reaching out to connect with the Takers as we seek a sustainable path to development.

I was inspired to open The Orenda again and finished the chapter Caressing with the ritual torture and killing of the two Iroquois captives discussed by Lewis and Kinew - this time without judgement, for that is the way it is.   

Bird, the elder, the great Huron warrior in the story, honors the two captives when he says, “These two are the bravest men I have ever had the pleasure of meeting....End it now” - the captives who had a hand in killing Bird’s family earlier, proved their honor by not succumbing to fear and accepted their fate with dignity as the overnight ritual came to an end with their deaths.  

“Suffering is key to achieving something meaningful” said Kinew. This is the different, yet legitimate worldview from a distinct culture (Leavers) that co-inhabits this earth with us the Takers, who seek to alleviate suffering through a material consumerist life.  

As I switched books to read Anthony J Hall’s Earth to Property, I came across a description of the Great Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, celebrating the 400^th anniversary of Columbus "discovering" America.  

Chicago was the frontier to showcase America’s westward expansion and the creation of its unique culture – innovative, vital and individual resourcefulness of Euro-America – the evolution of the Takers from agriculture to industry.  

It was exciting times with Thomas Edison’s inventions showcased through his company George Westinghouse competing with Nikola Tesla’s alternating current (AC power) which helped America dominate the world in technological and commercial innovation for decades to come.  

Thousands of people from around the world came to the exposition to witness American ingenuity, the machines, its processes, techniques of production, marketing and public relations prowess supported by a new culture of the “land of the free” – consumerism.

This American corporate culture developed by blending commerce and political influence with a coercive force that elevated the Taker to a higher level of “world belongs to man alone” myth, defined the capitalist ideology that rules the world.

The exposition also brought together world religions and the indigenous “Indian” people of both Canada and the US.  

Students from the Canadian residential schools were brought to show their integration to civilization where a pamphlet titled “The Canadian Indian” read;

“To make known the steps by which the Canadian people have to a large extent succeeded in giving the aboriginal tribes their civilization and its advantages, in return to their lands they have received from them”.

The plan to showcase the new civilization went well until eight Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) performers from British Columbia did their bidding on August 10^th on Great Britain Day in front of 10,000 people.  

George Hunt, was the astute leader of the Kwakwaka’wakw, with mastery of both his own Leaver culture of tradition and the modern Taker culture.  He and his delegation were not going to let this opportunity go by without displaying their spirit of defiance for what was expected of them – to be the quaint icons of an obsolete culture.

That day the Kwakwaka’wakw deviated from the previous performances of a sanitized, folklore image of themselves to shock the audience by mounting a spectacle that confirmed the stereotype of the"Aboriginal savage", yet they were being their authentic and distinct cultural selves.

Near the climax of the ceremony, George Hunt took a knife and cut two long incisions between the shoulder blades of two of the performers.  Then he reached into the bloody incisions and, stretching the skin away exposing the muscles, inserted ropes underneath the skin to the shock and awe of the audience.

This performance was a great affront and humiliation to the organizers and the Dominion of Canada, overwhelming the civilized imagery of the ‘Indian’ people presented earlier.  

Canada responded by extending the Indian Act to ban potlatch (an elaborate ceremonial event for gift giving)that were counter to the Christian evangelization of the “Indian”.

Provocative books like A Fair Country by John Ralston Saul brought to the surface the power and the potential of Canada’s different aboriginal peoples who survived the 16^th-20^th century onslaught of the Europeans and the Empire Loyalists.  Saul shows that aboriginal traditional culture is well and alive and even goes onto suggest that Canada is a Metis nation.   

The Orenda, through its controversial, yet compelling fiction brings to life these distinct differences in worldviews, cosmologies and perceptions between the Aboriginal and the European colonizers to “mainstream” Canada.   With the media attention, it has spawned much needed discussion and debate as Aboriginal people are being rediscovered in a different light moving away from the usual stereotypes. 

As Esteem Transforms

Many Aboriginal communities, as they overcome the legacy of residential schools and gain their voice with esteem and confidence, are developing into a formidable spiritual and economic force and also the fastest growing population in Canada.  

 

The emerging success stories of the James Bay Cree in Quebec, Pic Mobert of the Soo, the Tli Cho and Dene of the North among so many others who’s assertive voices temper to balance the economic focus with the spiritual and the natural, illustrates this.       

As the Leaver communities develop and become self reliant, there is the risk of growing apart from Taker - "Mainstream" Canada.  This could create a clash of cultures to divide Canada. 

Savages and Peacemakers

I am yet hearing judgments to The Orenda as we learn aboriginal wisdom, "the book proves they were savages" - yet we forget how the Americas - both North and South were formed by the Europeans with a much more complex form of savagery.
  
It was back then - so we learn from history, have crucial conversations, forgive each other and move forward as our minds have evolved too, as we have learned to be fearless and comfortable with each other's differences.

Over 400 years of coexistence is bound to culturally cross fertilize leaving the differences to be less than what we think.

Canadian born academic and author Stephen Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined says that violence in the world has declined for a combination of reasons, among them the world getting smaller because of technologies.  Our minds have evolved too with time, in learning to deal with our emotions of fear and needs, when it comes to differences. 

Yet for many Canadians the schism of understanding exists.  "Mainstream" Canada has an opportunity to thoughtfully reflect and reassess own biases and prejudices to engage the aboriginal communities on equal ground.  

As fellow Canadians, we have to collectively close the gap. That gap manifests itself as a third world nation within Canada, which all Canadians have to take collective responsibility for.

As I speak to more and more Aboriginal people, I really do not see a major divergence in values and aspirations, even though there are distinct cultural differences. When this is acknowledged and accepted by both the Takers and Leavers, old wounds could heal and the schism may close.  

Being authentic and fearless in this reconciliation process is the greatest opportunity for Canada to close the political, economic, social and cultural gap. That is to walk the talk based on our Values for pluralism and multiculturalism, which we celebrate as being truly Canadian.  

This then will require an acceptance of the new nations that may emerge within the nation of Canada.