Split by Personalities

The power of personality is tremendously important in the marketing of everything - from political ideology to pop music. However, this can lead to a number of problems.

Max Weber described these factors in his works on authority (1994).  His category of charismatic authority, looked at the power of personality in leadership - where support for movements or ideas, and the choices people make about these things, is governed by the personal qualities of candidates.

The issues created by 'personality' go far beyond politics. It has also caused problems within scientific communities. In certain scientific fields criticism has been levelled over the way credit is assigned for the completion of certain projects (Aaronson et al, 2008) - and research has delved into the reasons for the development of unfairly lopsided 'credit allocation' (Kleinberg & Oren, 2011).

The problem of credit, of acclaim and celebrity, is its value - both monetarily and in terms of the status gained within a community.

The risks this presents go beyond the motivations behind the actions of individuals, to the attempts of outside observers to decipher issues - whose window on the complicated ideas is often those famous in their field. The fame of these 'personalities', while it can generate attention for the field of study, can also obscure important information.

And there are always additional dangers when you engage with something because of the people involved, rather than directly with the facts - as much for them as for yourself. As author John Green (2008) put it in his novel Paper Towns:

'What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person'

Addressing issues on the basis of personality is an oversimplification. It is too simple and too easy to defer to an authority - whether that be a dogma, a canon or an authority figure.

People can never live up to that sort of scrutiny. What's more, it is unreasonable to let ideas stand or fall with people's reputations, rather than upon their own reasoned merits.

And here lies the problem of being moved by personality - it perverts reasoning and risks setting up dangerous authority figures.

The presence of strong authorities in all areas, and the importance of credit in the achievement of funding and security for those engaged in fields of intellectual study, all but assures the continuation of this problem for the present. But we must remain wary - and maintain vigilance against allowing our admiration to confuse attempts to get to the facts.

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References:
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+ Max Weber's 'Basic Concepts in Sociology'; Chp 4, Pt 4: Bases of Legitimate Order; Citadel 1994.

+ Scott Aaronson, Allan Borodin, Bernard Chazelle, Oded Goldreich, Shafi Goldwasser, Richard Karp, Michael Kearns, Christos Papadimitriou, Madhu Sudan & Salil Vadhan; 'Statement on conceptual contributions in theory'; on scottaaronson.com; 7 March 2008.

+ J.Kleinberg & S.Oren's 'Mechanisms for (Mis)Allocating Scientific Credit'; Proc. 43rd ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing; 2011.

+ John Green's 'Paper Towns'; Bloomsbury, 2008.

Competing Interests

Late last year Benetton were forced to withdraw images of the Pope and a senior Muslim leader kissing from their 'Unhate' campaign (Butt, 2011). Benetton have gained fame - though have never been far from infamy - for their promotional campaigns and have long been at the forefront in marketing. Not least being the decision to buy and the subsequent running of a Formula 1 racing team for a little over a decade. In spite of the controversy, these campaigns have promoted the Benetton brand alongside various community campaigns and social issues.

Primark have also, in the last few of years, begun to publicise their efforts to promote more ethical attitudes in business practices. However, Primark's efforts are invariably tied to investigations into their own past ethical practices (McDougall, 2009).

Both organisations set about their campaigns for different reasons. Regardless of the initial intent behind those campaigns, there are complex issues to address around the tying of moral questions to the actions of an individual consumer.

The foremost of these is what Slavoj Zizek described as 'semantic overinvestment' (2010). When consumerist and charitable or community gestures are combined into one and the same action, it places a massive burden upon a simple consumer decision. In doing so it alters our reasons for purchasing particular products and gives us good cause to worry that it's oversimplifying charitable acts.

For companies such as Benetton and Primark, there is profit to be gained from the marketable image of a company-with-a-conscience. Not least in the potential to exploit the guilt fostered when a costumer is presented with the moral element of their consumerism. But there are real risks.

As companies offer a consumer product that contains a guarantee of certain welfare, charitable or ethical practices they are also distancing their customers from the suffering they are trying to alleviate. This distance invites the customer to have a too easy, too simple and too passive relationship with their own acts of charity.

As companies are first and foremost tied to profit, it is important to remember that there is a distinction to be made between doing a good thing because it is profitable and doing a good thing while finding a way to make it profitable. When we invest our charitable sentiments into standoffish second-hand actions taken through companies, we stand to lose a lot should the company no longer find them profitable.

But more still is the fear that, when we distance ourselves from the suffering of others - even as we seek to alleviate it - we merely build more walls between us.

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References:
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+ Riazat Butt's 'Vatican criticises Benetton picture of pope kissing Muslim leader'; in The Guardian; 17 November 2011.

+ Dan McDougall's 'Primark in storm over conditions at UK supplier'; in The Guardian; 11 January 2009.

+ Sarah Butler's 'Primark "ramps up" ethical efforts after exposé on working practices'; in The Telegraph; 21 January 2010.

+ Slavoj Zizek's 'First as Tragedy, The as Farce'; at the RSA; 2010.

House Divided

There are many things that can cause a division between partners and take from them the undeniable benefits of cooperation. Last week, the coalition faced its most serious divide - the kind of split every minor disagreement has been portrayed as for the past two years. Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader Mr Nick Clegg publicly accused the Tories of breaking their word and the coalition agreement that had been so sorely tested, though not outright broken, in the past (BBC, 2012).

It appears that ideology has won out over the 'national interest' that the coalition had avowedly a 'chance to serve' (2010). When you consider the competing commitments of those involved, it comes as more of a surprise that the coalition agreement hadn't been seriously imperilled sooner.

The commitments of the Tory backbench to staunchly conservative ideas have been confronted at every turn by Liberal Democrat attempts to liberalise coalition policy - and that was always going to be a difficult balance to juggle for the Conservative Prime Minister Mr Cameron. These competing commitments seem to have forced the emergence of what analysts have described as 'a definite air of tit-for-tat' (Brant, 2012).

However, the emergence of tit-for-tat need not demand as much pessimism about the future of that relationship as some propose. In fact tit-for-tat may represent some prospect of continued cooperation. In a talk for the RSA, expert on human evolution and development Mark Pagel (2012) described humanity's 'inexorable' advancement in terms of our increasing ability to cooperate with others.

'Cooperation can normally win out over endless cycles of betrayal and revenge, because there's always a sort of seduction of competition and killing your enemy - because then you get to occupy those lands - but you have to live with the fear of that enemy trying to kill you. And so it seems to be an inexorable part of our history that cooperation has had greater returns than competition.'

And this isn't a limited observation (Nowak & Highfield, 2011). It has been observed in numerous situations where several players compete for limited resources - a famous example from game theory being the Prisoner's Dilemma. And it is here that tit-for-tat emerges as a basis for a potential strategy for recovering cooperation rather than both sides collapsing into a 'death spiral' of aggression.

What, after broken trust and punitive response, does this information hold for the Coalition Agreement? With Mr Cameron's backbench broken from their bounds and with three years still to run, the shaken trust within the coalition will have to be repaired - because while both the Tories & Lib Dems surely have back-up plans, their chances at the next election largely depend upon public approval of their fully implemented program.

This creates room for the Liberal Democrats to seek a renegotiation of the Coalition Agreement (Kampfner, 2012), and necessity for Mr Cameron to find a way to bring his party back around the table to discuss it.

If he can't, he is presenting the main opposition, the Labour Party with the same kind of choice. To remain on the fence and take their chances in three years time or to be proactive now and drive wedges, to show the daylight between the liberal and conservative ideologies, all while offering a policy middle ground to court the potential coalition partner Labour would need to govern now.

The three main parties - due to the divisions resulting from ideology, find themselves competing for a finite staple resource: votes. These competing interests, however, do not  rule out the possibility of cooperation - in fact cooperation becomes the best strategy for representing all views. So, regardless of which of the three main parties seizes the initiative, all of them need to cooperate with others to guarantee their survival.

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References:
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+ BBC's 'Nick Clegg: Lords reform plans to be abandoned'; 6 August 2012.

+ 'The Coalition: Our programme for government'; Cabinet Office, 2010.

+ Robin Brant's 'Analysis: What does ditching Lords reform mean for the coalition?'; 6 August 2012.

+ Mark Pagel's 'Wired for Culture: The natural history of human cooperation'; (Quote at 11:01); March 2012.

+ Martin Nowak & Roger Highfield's 'Supercooperators: The mathematics of evolution, altruism and human behaviour'; April 2011.

+ John Kampfner's 'The Lib Dems are in a stronger position than the Tories – but hide it well'; in The Guardian; 9 August 2012.

Olympic Ideal - Rise, Fall, Struggle and Redemption

There has been much said already about the inspiration to be drawn from Team GB's medal haul last Saturday. However, Saturday did not have a monopoly on important Olympic moments. There is also some good to be taken from the 100m Olympic semi-finals and Dwain Chambers.

It stands as a major achievement because, for a long time, it didn't look like Dwain Chambers would ever run at a major championship ever again. Chambers was banned in 2003, for two years, after testing positive for a performance enhancing drug (Mackay, 2003).

But Chambers also faced a lifetime ban imposed on him by the British Olympic Association (BOA) - the organisation that select and run the British Olympic team.

Chambers' original ban punished the act of cheating - and the breaking of Coubertin's ideals: The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.

So what then was the lifetime ban punishing? By seeking to block Chambers from having a shot at redeeming himself once his ban ended, the BOA were taking a deeply reactionary response to Chambers - a reaction that aimed to make an example of him. In doing so the BOA failed to treat the athlete as an individual, or his case with due regard for the rules, and so found itself failing to comply with the spirit of the games - all in its hurry to make a point quickly and 'hysterically'. The lifetime ban was finally overturned (Guardian, 2012) - just months before the London Games - when it was also found to have failed to comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency rules.

Altogether Chambers' career has followed the path of the tragic heroes: the rise to prominence, the fall from grace - but also the chance for an act of redemption. Previously punished for cheating, he earned the right to compete once more; proved his fitness and qualified.

So while 'Super-Saturday' was a great moment for British sport, Chambers' answer when asked to sum up the whole occasion was also worth seeing (BBC, 2012):

Chambers:    I'm happy to be here man. I really am.
Interviewer: Was it worth all the heartache in the build up?
Chambers:    Yes. It was worth every moment of it. To feel that roar and be in this atmosphere again - money can't buy that and I'm glad I've fought so hard to get to this position.'

Chamber's answer reflects the importance that Coubertin placed upon the struggle over the triumph - and that through striving well there is more to be earned at the Olympics than medals.

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References:
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+ Duncan Mackay's 'UK's top sprinter in positive drug test'; 22 October 2003.

+ The Guardian's 'London 2012: Wada accuses BOA of making "hysterical statements"'; 30 April 2012.

+ BBC's 'Athletics: Finals'; from 1:11:00; 5 August 2012.