Pessimistic optimism
The party’s over

Roger Steare faces up to the new, tighter economic reality and suggests embracing life’s simpler pleasures.

My Dad was a pessimist. He argued that by being a pessimist he would never be disappointed. I could see his point, but I’ve always been an optimist because while I’m sometimes disappointed, I spend most of my life feeling better about the world. However, age has changed my view of optimism. I now believe in “hope” – and this hope I believe in is rooted in my Dad’s pessimism.

For me, hope comes from confronting the truth of the realities we face in every aspect of our lives. So it’s more like pessimism than the naïve optimism of youth. Yes, life can be good. But we only feel good because we know what it’s like to feel bad. Love only has meaning when we know loss. Happiness only has meaning when we know sadness. And I believe we can only truly have hope when we find the courage to confront the potential disasters we face.

Yes, I’m hopeful about 2011 and beyond, but only because I’ve tried to confront the brutal realities of life and work; and of economics, politics and society. So how do I see these realities? Well, we haven’t the space for a full account now but let’s begin with economic realities.

I believe we’re confronting the very end of the party – no, not of the LibDems – but the economic party. If you read my Twitter feed (“ethicability”), you will see me tweeting on many economic news stories with the phrase: “This isn’t recession. This is systems failure.” What I mean by this is that I believe we are seeing the collapse of an economic model that has moved from the logical premise that all resources are “scarce” and therefore “finite”; to one in which most economists and politicians seem to believe that economy means “growth” and “more”! Headless chickens start running around my TV when consumer spending fails to grow, but no-one suggests that in the light of our £1.5tn consumer debt mountain, spending money we don’t have on rubbish we don’t need (aka “landfill”) might not be such a good idea after all.

Let me explain what the word “economy” really denotes. It means less, not more. It means getting by with enough. When my wife lets me near the washing machine, even I know that the economy button means less water, power and detergent, not more. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now living in an alternative universe where words now mean the opposite of what they should.

So I for one actually believe it’s a good thing that consumer credit is being squeezed, even if the “maximists” (the antonym for “economists”) at the Bank of England still believe that we can get out of this credit crunch by printing even more money. Trust me, this will end in tears sooner, rather than later.

So what will we do when the party’s over? Simple. No, I really do mean “simple”. Life will become simple in the way it did when we had a foot or more of snow over Christmas. We will re-discover that true wealth in life can be found in the uncomplicated things in life. A helping hand for an elderly neighbour. Sharing bread and milk with those who couldn’t get to the shops. No money changed hands but there was wealth, there was love. And there was hope.

www.pwc.co.uk/eng/issues/trust.html

Roger Steare is a Corporate Philosopher and Professor of Organisational Ethics at Cass Business School, London.
He can be contacted at:roger.steare@ethicability.org
You can try his integrity test at www.ethicability.org
Watch Roger Steare’s new video on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=unufsY1HZh8

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