Tag: honesty

The book! Part Five: Honesty.

In one very real sense, a chapter about the quality of honesty in dogs is bizarre. Surely, honesty, and dishonesty, are terms that exclusively describe human tendencies. When the term “dishonest” is used to describe a person, most often we are describing an effort by that person to deceive another. It is a description of someone who intentionally is trying to mislead or misinform us.

But in terms of honesty, or dishonesty, what I am about to say probably applies to all animals; I don’t know. Namely, that if there was one animal on Planet Earth that is incapable of guile or deceit, it has to be the dog. There is no doubt in my mind that dogs remain one of the most beautiful gifts nature has bestowed upon us humans.

Now that last bold statement is not to imply that dogs don’t try to manipulate us humans; far from it. Their attempts at manipulation would impress any three-year-old child! But there’s nothing dishonest about a dog trying to manipulate its owner into giving the dog whatever it wants; they are far too obvious in their motives and methods. As I read somewhere, dogs are: “Just scavengers looking for a way to get something with minimal effort.”

Thus I think we can take it as a given that dogs are honest; fundamentally so.

OK, dear reader, you have no way of knowing that after writing that last sentence, I sat staring at the screen for a good ten minutes. I didn’t know how to continue the theme. I couldn’t think of anything to add to what every “good person and true” knows, and has known since time immemorial: honesty is a fundamental aspect of being a good person; the enviable of all titles, as George Washington is reputed to have said.

What was exercising my brain was to come at the subject of honesty in a way that offered a compelling reason for being honest; over and above the natural assumption about honesty, that it is so blindingly obvious not to require being spelt out; in a manner of speaking. It struck me that honesty is very different to the majority of the other qualities that we need to learn from dogs.
Different in the sense that the other qualities are open to being embraced as something that may be learnt, with clear rewards from so doing, whereas honesty seems a fundamental, core way of relating to the world around one. Mind you, there was a tiny voice in my head that was nagging away at me that said that honesty may not be so ‘black and white’. For example, the question of ‘white lies’. But, at heart, I was still lost as to how to proceed.

So, I spent another thirty minutes exploring the web looking for clarity; looking for some inspiration. Yet those web searches just ended up confusing me more. About the least confusing item I came across, more or less at random, was a section from an article read[1] on the website The New Atlantis. The full article was entitled: The truth about human nature.

The section that I read, and is reproduced below, seemed to confirm in my mind that honesty; something that, by rights, should be so fundamentally understood, was anything but simple.

Since Nietzsche, the choice of which version of ourselves we identify with has been widely understood as a choice between lying and truth-telling — to ourselves as much as to others. The moral ideal has become authenticity — a particular kind of honesty. Of course, just about any philosophical ideal is grounded in some sort of honesty: the search for Truth requires truth. Yet Aristotle describes honesty as a virtue only of self-presentation — the balance between self-deprecation and boastfulness. And Plato never lists honesty as a virtue at all, and even distinguishes between “true lies” and useful or noble lies. From the modern to the post-modern era, honesty and authenticity shifted to become much of the telos[2] of life, where before they had been but means in our progress toward that end.

Here was me looking for clarity only to find anything but that!

So what to make of all this?

I am going to fall back on the ideas expressed in the chapter on community. Rather on the closing words of that chapter, “… the power of sharing, of living a local community life, may just possibly be the difference between failure and survival of us humans.’

There’s a sense of hope in me that we are heading for an era of new localism that will, in and of itself, reinforce a culture of honesty in one’s life. Why such hope? Because there are signs. Such as this one: the growing concern about factory farming, surfacing as increasingly more vibrant local food movements, demonstrating that people are really scrutinising where their food comes from. More than that! There are increasing concerns as to where our medicines are made and the possible side-effects, and a dawning awareness of how we are living on the backs of exploited third world workers (and poorly paid service workers here at home). Possibly all under a global umbrella of awareness that big government is no longer working as it should be; evidenced by falling voter turnout numbers at key elections in the USA and many other countries.

My hope is that this growing ‘honesty’ about the reality of our present world and where it appears to be heading is at the heart, in my opinion, of an expanding local consciousness permeating the hearts and minds of many people, leading them to want to become more “local.”

Should this come about, and I hope that it does in my lifetime, then an honesty of thought and deed will be, nay, has to be, a core attribute of life in a well-functioning local community.

[1] http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-truth-about-human-nature
[2] As in an end or purpose of life

“THE RIGHT STUFF”

Football – and the winner is ……. money and the lust for fame.

Well, the England v Germany game was tragic of course. But it wasn’t because:

the England team lost
they played not only badly but moronically, with an idiotic rush upfield of the whole defence as if it were the last few minutes of the game, thus allowing the Germans to score more or less at will
they repeated a few minutes later EXACTLY the same error as described above
the Germans scored a goal straight from the kick-off, which BBC commentators said they had never before seen in an international match
many of the players seemed “tired”, though this didn’t seem to trouble other players of the Premier League who were playing for other countries
the English players mostly plodded about like sleepy elephants compared to the racing panthers of Germany (resisting the temptation to say ‘panzers’)
the 5 million quid manager didn’t seem to have a clue; playing people out of position in a 4-4-2 formation that NOBODY else uses
there were no specialist wingers; quite useful for getting behind the defence and lobbing in crosses, a strategy that seems as foreign to the manager as he is himself
the same person was clearly unable to motivate and organise his players; as he speaks a different language this is not all that surprising – NO OTHER NATIONAL TEAM has a foreign manager, but we have to be different
the manager – with three goals needed in 15 minutes brought on Emile Heskey as our ‘last hope’, no doubt a worthy person but with a very poor goal-scoring record
the forward with the best goal-scoring record of all the English team (Crouch) hardly got a look-in
the players were clearly disorganised and uninspired
there seemed to be little real leadership on or off the field, with rumblings of discontent in the camp
for all of the above the FA is paying this hopeless manager nearly £20,000 per working day of the year

No, all the above is or was silly – or perhaps a better word is “pathetic”. The real tragedy concerns the goal that wasn’t.

Of course, this was every bit as silly as the rest of it, FIFA looking completely ridiculous by its refusal to contemplate the use of technology to enhance “fairness” (a concept I am quite keen on but which seems a bit out of fashion generally). It seems that some of the vastly-paid and expensively-hotelled world-ranging FIFA executives think that technology would “reduce the drama”. I am seriously hoping that Argentina “do a Lampard” on Germany in the Friday game so that the idiocy of this policy will be rubbed in, especially to the (rather sadly) gloating Germans.

But we STILL haven’t got to the tragic bit, which is that the Germans missed a chance to be remembered for ever as the team that owned up to a goal. Neuer, the German goalkeeper, has said that when the ball rebounded from the bar and went in (as it clearly did) he at once reached behind, grabbed it and hoofed it upfield “so that the referee wouldn’t think it had gone in.” which of course (being blind) he didn’t.

In other words, Neuer KNEW it wasn’t a goal but didn’t say so. With this action he joined the serial cheats, divers, “get-an-opposing-player-sent-off” and Maradona “Hand-of-God” players who will do anything to win. These are people to whom the concept of sportsmanship, fairness, honesty and “doing the right stuff” are alien.

In the case of Maradona, the ability of humans to reach the peaks of irony was once again illustrated when before the World Cup started he made a plea for “fair play”. I am unaware that he has ever apologised for his own cheating, but of course it is much easier to urge other people to behave in a certain way than to do it yourself.

Anyway, I do not claim the English would have done any different; we’ll never know. Just as we’ll never know what the score of this match WOULD have been HAD the goal been given. What we DO know is that we’ll be thinking for the next forty years about how silly and unjust this was just as the Germans have been whinging on for the same length of time about 1966. It could and should have been so different. HAD the Germans gone at once to the ref and said: “It was a goal”, they would have been moral heroes for the rest of footballing history rather than remembered (by me at least) as just another bunch of cheats.

The tragedy of course is that a TREMENDOUS OPPORTUNITY was lost to make a pitch for honesty, fairness, sportsmanship and decency. What an example that would have been to everyone, especially our kids! And WHAT A CHANCE to dump for ever and ever the image of football as a cheats’ activity dominated by the false Gods of money and fame as well as the stereo-typed image that some idiotic Brits have of Germans as unfeeling Nazis.

No, their instinct was NOT to admit the goal and to benefit from an unfair error. Sad … for the next 40 years we’ll be talking about the unfairness rather than what a wonderful gesture they made.

Oh, and as for 1966, let’s lay this ghost to rest. There was NEVER ANY QUESTION that it wasn’t a goal. The referee and linesman on that day BOTH said it was a goal and it is obvious from the reaction of the players that it was a goal, even if in those times the cameras were not as sophisticated as today’s and cannot definitively PROVE it was a goal. I am afraid this 1966: “It wasn’t a goal – we wuz robbed.” stuff is a bit like the urban myth: “The German army was stabbed in the back by politicians.” that Hitler exploited after WWI.

Well, for me the World Cup has lost some sheen; it is all so silly, nationalistic and rife with unsportsmanship. All that one lives with (one is used it these days), but the missed opportunity to make a moral stand is one I deeply regret.

I hope it is clear that this has NOTHING TO DO with my being English. Had our boys done the same I would have been just as sad, even more so, as – perhaps stupidly – I would like to think we are made of better stuff. However, football is not cricket and even cricket is often not cricket today either.

By Chris Snuggs

The Age of Pledge and Spin

A dream that, perhaps, one day politicians will be truthful.

British General Elections are always fascinating occasions. On the one hand they are deadly serious. Mrs Thatcher’s win in 1979 set up the country for 18 years of Tory rule with massive changes and frequent social conflict whose effects are still felt today.

It was either a total social and economic disaster or a great leap forward into modernity depending on your point of view. Her victory of course also consigned Labour to 18 years of impotent pfaffing about in the political wilderness.

But on the other hand they always cause a great deal of hilarity to the student of human behaviour, as day after day nonsensical, fatuous, spinladen pronouncements are made by those desperate to get their hands on power.

And these pronouncements of future intentions (often delivered with the word “pledge” attached – as if that were somehow more weighty than “promise”) are often based not on reason or good planning but on how they will go down with the public!

And amazingly, they often seem to be made without any great thought about the consequences. Brown has got some stick only today because he promised (or if you like “pledged”) that there would be no VAT imposed on the Simon Cowell charity record for Haiti, yet EU rules prohibit such gestures and so the Treasury is having after all to charge VAT and is now promising to pay this back with increased aid as a workaround.

The increased aid could have been given in the first place without his headline-grabbing “pledge” to make it VAT-free.

As ex Chancellor, Brown should have KNOWN that removing VAT from individual items on a whim is not allowed, but he clearly spoke without thinking, the headline-potential of declaring the record VAT-free being irresistible.

Gordon Brown has also got himself into “another fine mess” by trying out a variation of his trick of the 1994 election.

During the pre-election campaign then he solemnly pledged NOT to raise income tax. No, not he. He was not the man to steal the public’s hard-earned cash by raising income tax; that would be most unsporting.

Meanwhile the poor old honest and hopelessly-naive spinfree Lib-Dems promised to put one measly pence onto income tax to pay for more education. Naturally, in the election they got slaughtered as wild spenders. You couldn’t make it up!

As for Gordon Brown, he kept his word. Income Tax remained as untouched as the virgin snow. But he had a cunning plan; as soon as he got his hands on our money, he vastly raised National Insurance (NI) instead. It actually comes down to the same thing, but of course the SPIN was different. That was how Brown’s management of our finances began, and so it has gone ever since.

Well, it’s hard not to repeat a winning formula, as many crooks have found out to their cost. Putting up National Insurance of course (even if this time you TELL the people you’re going to do it) can be sold as much more socially responsible than simply putting up income tax. The former can be spun as essential to pay for hospitals, pensions and the like whereas the latter seems more often like Robin Hood in reverse. The silly thing is that it’s ALL MONEY TAKEN FROM OUR PAYPACKETS, so what difference does it make?

Well, to the wage-earner, none at all, but to the employer quite a lot, and this is where Brown is batting on a sticky wicket. Increasing National Insurance certainly IS a “tax on jobs”. Let’s look across the English Channel ……

They have a VERY high level of NI (French = “charges”) in France. The result is that:

Employers bend over backwards NOT to employ anyone; it is so expensive.
Productivity in France is very high (higher than in the US – fewer workers than in many other countries do the same amount of work).
Unemployment is also consistently very high.

In Denmark it is much cheaper and easier to hire and fire people than in France. Oh Dear! Horrible, nasty, capitalist, Denmark and wonderful, caring, socialist France!!

Errmmm … No, actually; unemployment in Denmark is usually around 4% (I just checked; it is TODAY despite all the economic chaos just 4.1%) and in France endemically nearer 10%.

Rocket science it ain’t. Sad for the otherwise-could-be-employed it certainly is.

Well, even the plebs are not quite as gullible as 25 years ago. The negative effects on employment are blindingly-obvious to employers but as it is such an easy thing to understand (though not apparently for the entire French government or for Mr Brown) ordinary people are beginning to understand it, too. Brown’s statement that he will raise NI isn’t doing his election campaign any good at all.

However, as it is currently business leaders in particular who are bleating about this, perhaps it will be spun as: “Don’t worry chaps – it’s just those capitalist business-chief bastards whinging again”. That’s one thing you can rely on in an election; there will be endless spinning, quoting of statistics and rubbishing of the enemy ….

By Chris Snuggs

Celibacy in the Church

Is this a need for change that will become unstoppable for the Catholic Church?

I approach this subject with some hesitation. It’s a free world, and how people choose to organise themselves is basically their affair; freedom of association and all that. However, all freedoms are both a personal matter and an absolute right as long as they do not impinge on the rights and freedoms of others. So, in for a penny ……

The Catholic Church’s insistence on celibacy for their priests’ is obviously absurd. It is all very well in theory – “they can then concentrate on serving God” – if you (somewhat bizarrely in my opinion) choose to make that argument. The problem is that Man is NOT a theoretical animal. Sexual abstinence is alien to most models of Homo Sapiens that roll off the production line. It may be the preferred CHOICE that works for some, or even many, but forcing it on priests just DOES NOT WORK.

In recent years, there have been endless scandals in the Catholic Church about the abuse of children by priests, to the point where their policy in fact makes a total mockery of the vast edifice and bureaucracy that their Church is.

There was (or rather is) the dreadful case of the abuse in Ireland going on for decades and involving the most appalling abuse covered up at the highest levels. Now there is an on-going crisis in Germany, with churches and priests all over the country suspected of child-abuse. There are plenty of other examples we know about, and no doubt many we don’t.

And the word “cover-up” is deadly, of course. As soon as an organism evolves – and I find an amoeba, the Church, a company, a political party all alike in this respect – its first instinct is to survive and multiply. And so we have today the grisly spectacle of a Bishop apologising for covering up a priest’s paedophilia. The (usually wrongly) perceived needs of the organism almost ALWAYS take precedence over the law, humanity and decency. Rather than deal effectively and openly (and THAT is what this Blog is all about) with a real problem, the Church very often sweeps the problem under the carpet in the hope that it will go away.

Only of course (like the toxic effects of sub-prime insanity) a serious problem does NOT usually self-heal. Would the Bishop try out this policy with a toothache? I doubt it; he’s know it would only get worse and whack him in the midriff at some stage. So WHY do they do it with abuse cases in their own Church?

No, as long as you have this absurd dogma in the Catholic Church, you will have abuse. And the point is, as soon as you get abuse, it concerns us ALL. We then DO have a right to stick our nose into the Catholic Church’s affairs, or so I maintain. No man is an island ……

Unfortunately, the larger the institution and especially where it concerns beliefs, creeds or whatever (and companies are often similar) the more difficult it is to give up a long-held shibboleth even in the face of the most overwhelming evidence that it is time to “move on”.

If the Pope thinks that all this is helping his particular organism to survive, he is – I believe – sorely mistaken. Celibacy is unnatural – period. Man is HUMAN (sorry to state the obvious). Sex is an integral part of humanity (for the vast majority). But all that is theory and opinion; the point is, the policy JUST DOES NOT WORK, thus leading to multiple and repeated cases of abuse. There may be hand-wrenching, apologies, investigations and promises to put the house in order, but as long as the Pope insists on celibacy, there will be abuse.

And what for? It is all so POINTLESS! Is the Catholic Church maintaining that , for example, the Church of England (CofE) is in some way heretical? If marriage for priests works OK for the CofE, then why not for Catholics? In reality, this dogmatism is only the dead-weight of centuries of tradition, but we should cast off dead weights in the interests of innocent children – and of course (they are human, too) of priests themselves.

Though not a believer, I also sometimes wonder what God would think. In fact, trying to empathize with God is one of my favourite pastimes. Looking down on all this, wouldn’t he be inclined to think the Catholic Church is barmy? How could he POSSIBLY (if he is the God I think he must be) want his humanly-frail priests to be celibate if it means (AS IT DOES) the regular and repeated abuse of children?

By Chris Snuggs

The EU and the European Taxpayer

Integrity? Here is your quiz question for today:

Which international, taxpayer-funded organisation has an unelected crony of the British Prime Minister in a high-level post (though not the highest) who earns more than the President of the United States and double the salary of Hillary Clinton?

Clue!

Yes, you’re right. It is the European Union. This is an organisation of member states that in principle is supposed to be

about creating a free, democratic and open market in Europe. It has turned into a proto-state (in the eyes of the Brusselocrats) which – therefore – has to have a “Foreign Minister”, in this case Baroness Ashton.

This is a person with very little knowledge of international affairs sent by Gordon Brown to Brussels because he couldn’t afford to lose Peter Mandelson or David Milliband. This is a person never elected to any public post, yet who receives a vast salary and benefits package higher than that of ANY of the Presidents and/or Prime Ministers of ANY of the member states of the EU.

As “The Daily Mail” points out, in addition to this very large salary the Foreign Minister also enjoys an extraordinary raft of other benefits:

“Her basic pay of £250,000 is double that of her U.S. counterpart, Hillary Clinton (who’s on £124,000). And on top of that, Lady Ashton is entitled to a raft of benefits including a £38,000 yearly accommodation allowance, £10,000 annual entertainment budget, two chauffeurs, plus thousands of pounds more in sundry allowances and – if she survives – a pension of £64,000 pa (three times the average salary in Britain) plus a “golden handshake” of over £450,000.”

All this goes hand-in-hand with billions spent on the new EU “diplomatic service”.

But hang on a minute! The EU is NOT A STATE!

The EU has no army! Baroness Ashton as “Foreign Minister” can decide on practically nothing that the key heads of government do not agree to. So what is going on here? Is all this vast waste of public money in a time of financial crisis either A) the bloated pretention of Brusselcrats who have a delusional idea of their own importance or B) another brick in the wall which one day WILL be a United States of Europe.

One can see how the thinking goes: “We’ll set up a “Foreign Ministry” so big and powerful that one day they will just have to agree to creating a single state to justify it. And of course the more it costs, the more important it obviously is and therefore the more powerful we ourselves will be. And naturally, the more jobs there will be for us to go to on the Brussels merry-go-round.

Of course, it is both A AND B. And how can they afford these humungous salaries? Well, because they can get away with it. In theory they are accountable, but in reality? How many people even know who their European MP is? Once you get onto the Euro Gravy Train it disappears out of sight. Nothing the voter says or does seems to stop the bloated upward creep of salaries, allowances and pretentions.

How ANY Brusselocrat can justify such a ludicrous salary for an unelected and essentially unimportant “minister” is a mystery. The main justification seems to be “self-interest”. The EU is NOT A STATE. States have Foreign Ministers.

It is dishonest and amounts to theft of public funds. But that is not the WORST of it. The saddest thing is that it damages the morale of those who – like me – used to believe in a Europe united but not “statefied”. I want a free and open market. I do NOT want a United States of Europe. But this is where they want to lead us, and – like a black hole – each year sees a tiny creep in that direction, or in the above-mentioned case, a BIG creep. I also do not want a venal, money-grabbing, bureaucratic elite in Brussels which makes 80% and rising of British law.

Once again, one wonders if delusional pretentions will bring the whole edifice crashing down and the baby go out with the bathwater …

By Chris Snuggs

The Toyota Fiasco

Toyota – How not to do business!

Learning from Dogs was created by a few people who felt compelled to promote the values of “integrity”, which is often in short supply in the modern world, though perhaps it always has been to some extent in all civilisations. Is dishonesty an eternal part of Human Nature? We like to think not …..

Well, “Integrity” includes being honest, open and dedicated to the truth, even if this is personally inconvenient. It may seem a somewhat forlorn hope to promote something that for an important minority of people is and will probably remain an alien concept, these being people who put self above group. However, the recent Toyota fiasco reminds me that perhaps integrity’s time has indeed arrived, for this is THE INFORMATION AGE. It is NO LONGER easy to hide the truth, which tends to come out now with greater frequency due to a variety of factors including most importantly the Internet. But there are other reasons, too. To take Britain, for example, we now have the “Freedom of Information Act”, which – despite some limitations – has done wonders in allowing the free press (another essential ingredient of course, and sadly lacking in so many countries) to reveal wrong-doing, principally by appallingly-incompetent governments.

As for Toyota, what has staggered me is that the company KNEW of these accelerator & brake problems several years ago. Indeed, people began having crashes as far back as 2006. Yet only recently has it done anything serious about putting things right. One has to wonder what on earth possessed the Toyota bosses to think that they could get away with it, which on the face of it seems to be exactly what they were trying to do. Who was advising them? It seems to me to have been INEVITABLE that the truth about their cars’ problems would come out, so even from a cynical and selfish point of view they should have recalled the defective cars at least two years ago. But quite APART from the wisdom of doing that in practical, business terms (the result of delay being to devastate the company’s image to a far greater extent than would otherwise have been the case) there was a MORAL aspect to the problem, too. By ALLOWING the problems to go unresolved they put people at risk. And not just ANY people, but their customers! As has been said before, but sadly with all too much frequency, “You couldn’t make this up.”

How could the world’s number one car manufacturer get it so utterly and totally wrong, both from a moral and practical point of view? I am wondering if Toyota can recover from this. Yes, I know they are big, but there are PLENTY OF CHOICES for people seeking to buy a vehicle. Who in their right mind is now going to buy a car from a company which A) made defective cars (and MILLIONS of them) and B) HID THE TRUTH while people were dying in crashes?

One reason may again be the Japanese obsession with “face”. It was probably difficult for the world’s number one company, which seemed capable of nothing but success, to admit publicly that it had got things badly wrong. The Chairman is now admitting this, but to be frank it reminds me of the old expression about getting blood out of a stone, or being dragged kicking and screaming to the confessional. And from what I read today he seems to be blaming the troubles on the fact that “the company may have grown too quickly.” I could describe this utterance with an extremely rude word or two but as this is a family site I will refrain. Let’s just say that the company WASN’T HONEST.

I remember as a kid growing up in the shattered London of the1950s the lessons I got from teachers and parents. One of those which stuck in my mind was “Honesty is the best policy.” This has never been more true as it is now. For the Brave New World we dream of honesty is a sine qua non. We must be honest with ourselves, our friends, families, companies and the public. There is no other way to happiness. Will Toyota’s disaster be a lesson for other companies? NOBODY can get it right all the time and there is no dishonour in the occasional failure, only in the lies involved in trying to cover it up. How many times has this been demonstrated? Had Nixon come clean at once about Watergate he might have survived, but the cover-up was worse than the deed.

On a practical note, I sincerely hope that the families of those killed or maimed in Toyota accidents will sting the company for every yen they can; that is no more than the company deserves.

By Chris Snuggs

[BBC News had an item on the 24th that makes interesting watching. Ed.]

“FACE” and the Human Spirit

Putting on a face with deadly consequences!

I worked for 10 years at ISUGA, a school in Quimper, France dedicated to multi-cultural understanding and international co-operation in business. This was an extremely rich experience at a school where the majority of the foreign students were Chinese.

campus_isuga — The campus at ISUGA, Quimper, France

It is also, incidentally, the place where I had to good fortune to meet Jon Lavin and Paul Handover, fellow authors on Learning from Dogs.

I like to think that I have always been sensitive to the cultural differences between different nationalities. Having lived abroad for long periods in both France and Germany, the idea of living in a sort of English enclave somewhere, jealously guarding such cultural practices as endless burgers and fish and chips, is totally anathema to me.

I am human first and English second and if I live in Germany, France or anywhere else I want to live like the natives as far as possible …

This also means making an effort to understand and accept their “culture”. Now this normally poses no problem, but with my Asian friends there is one aspect of their culture that I could not accept. And of course, if one DOES put one’s humanity first, then there is always the risk that the culture of one’s hosts – in some respect – may have to take second place. The “culture ” of Germany in the 1930s was fascist, and I certainly could not have lived with that.

No, what causes me problems with Asians (and particularly Chinese) is this question of “FACE”. One is supposed – and one learns this on “cultural-understanding” courses for businessmen (which of course I organised at my school!!) – to so arrange things that EVEN IF the Asian negotiating counterpart is a complete fool and/or makes the most idiotic errors one must ALWAYS find a way to avoid humiliating them in any way.

Well, “humiliating” is too strong a word in fact … one is supposed to arrange things that they never seem to be in an “inferior” position in any way.

My problem with this is that it is in fact the antithesis of everything this site stands for, which is integrity, truth and honesty. Now if a negotiating partner does in fact make some sort of mistake then to pretend otherwise just to preserve their “face” is dishonest, isn’t it? And what are we in fact preserving? An IMAGE and not the reality.

It is, in fact, totally AGAINST the Human Spirit. We are all fallible. I know of no perfect men or women (though Claudia Schiffer comes close 😉 ). It is simply DISHONEST to deny this to preserve “FACE”.

The current British government could have done with learning this lesson. For YEARS there was never ANY acceptance that, yes – perhaps – they might have got some things wrong. Funnily enough, this is coming now in short bursts, but not enough to be convincing – shame!

“FACE” is of course a FACADE. I no longer am interest in facades, but the truth. But the worse aspect of this Asian FACE thing is that it is so totally accepted by them (and by us, but that’s our fault) as being “normal” and acceptable. No, it is NOT acceptable.

The stimulus for this post came from the recent execution of a British drug-smuggler in China. Now it is quite clear from what has been revealed that this guy was A) not fully compos mentis and B) was set up as a mule by a handler. He was caught, tried, sentenced to death and executed by the Chinese. No, I have no sympathy for drug-smugglers, but Mr “Big” he was not.

What muddied the waters even more was that the British Prime Minister made a special plea for clemency, which might very well in normal cases have been granted. But these were not normal circumstances. Just before this incident the British had severely criticized the Chinese for their stance on Global Warming at the Copenhagen Conference. Now, ANY criticism of the CPP (Chinese Communist Party) is likely to be taken as a “loss of face”. One suspects – but there is no way to know – that the Chinese refusal to listen to Prime Minister Brown’s very strong plea for clemency was the CPP’s way of putting the British government in its place and restoring its “face”.

The point is, BEING WRONG is HUMAN. Pretending to be RIGHT all the time is NOT HUMAN. It is IMPOSSIBLE. We should accept this and learn humility. Sadly, the words “humility” and “Chinese Communist Party” are unlikely bedfellows.

By Chris Snuggs

[When Chris wrote this Post, he was unaware of one that I had written that was published on the 28th. Interesting parallels! Ed.]

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