Keeping Your Mind – and Your Money

Our financial roller coaster has offered many opportunities to observe people thinking about their financial situations under stress – or not.  A new book offers some good examples of how businessmen and investors can keep their cool.

After the collapse of Lehman Brothers two years ago, the owner of a real estate firm specializing in high-end luxury sales obviously faced a serious threat to his business.  That event sent shock waves through his potential customers.  They stopped spending.  How to survive?  But, first, how to think clearly about his options?

The book’s author, Paul Sullivan, tells the story in the business section of today’s New York Times.  In this case, the real estate broker had to get past his pride, and face unpleasant facts.  His CFO told him the risk, and suggested closing some offices to cut costs, but the broker wanted to wait before acting.

Sullivan commented:  “Under financial pressure, most people do not and cannot think dispassionately until it is too late. They choke because they wait too long to sell, thinking their situation will improve. When it does not, they have burned through their reserve funds and are still going to lose what they were struggling to keep.”  (See, “The Art of Thinking Clearly Under Great Pressure.”)

He makes some sensible suggestions, the most important of which is focusing on the problem.  In other words:  keep it in mind, don’t distract yourself, don’t succumb to overly optimistic projections.  But how do you do that?  How do you overcame what the real estate broker called his “pride,” the embarrassment and disappointment he faced in cutting back his business.

The story suggests three critical factors in becoming focused.  The first is getting clear about the financial facts:  the business was over-extended and it faced hard times.  The other two are more subtle.  He found someone to talk it over with, someone to whom he could listen who was not filled up with his own emotions.  Finally, he gave himself the opportunity to reflect.  He went for a long walk.

That may seem simple, but it was the key.  He created the inner space he needed to review the facts, to think clearly on his own, to help himself shake free of the anxiety and pressure that beset him.  If he didn’t have the facts or the advice, it’s unlikely the walk would have done him much good.  He would most likely have just circled around and around the problem that worried him.  But with those elements in his mind, he could let the conclusions he needed to reach settle into a clear course of action.

As usual, we need information and we need help to face our problems.  But we can only arrive at the solutions by ourselves.  The trick is giving our minds the space they need.

A Common Humanity — Or A Different Species?

Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up Jewish shoppers, Sunni insurgents killing Shia police, Christian fundamentalists murdering abortion doctors, Hindu mobs attaching worshippers at Muslim shrines . . . .   So much of the intolerance and hatred in the world seems to spring from religious differences.

And yet religions give us the largest possible overview of mankind.  They focus on our relationship with the god who created us, or the ultimate reality that lies behind all appearances.  They ask of us to think about our lives from the perspective of eternity.

A story today in The New York Times tells about the Golden Temple, the holiest Sikh shrine, where members of different religions come together to prepare free meals that are available to all.  Somehow, they leave behind their antagonisms, work together and eat together in a remarkable enterprise, going back to the sixteenth century, that serves up to 80,000 people a day.

Many Hindus at the shrine’s kitchen are able to suspend awareness of the rigid differences of their caste system.  They prepare food, clean floors, and join in with others with whom social interaction is normally proscribed.

According to The Times: “Ashok Kumar, a Hindu who used to be a bookbinder, has been coming to the kitchen for the past five years — all day, almost every day — to work as a volunteer. ‘It is my service,’ he explained, after reluctantly taking a very brief break from his syncopated tray sorting.

“’I feel happy here,’ he said when asked why he had given up his old life.  Indians of all faiths come here to find a measure of peace largely unavailable in the cacophony of the nation’s 1.2 billion people.”  (See, “A Sikh Temple Where All May Eat, and Pitch In.”)

The achievement is extraordinary but the idea is quite simple:  this “service” gives them the chance of feel their connection with others.  The basic function of feeding links them together in a common human activity based in a universal need.  Religion can bring people together in this way.

On the other hand, it can also divide.  It can split the human species into those believers who have truth, who have the proper genes, who obey the correct laws or subscribe to the right doctrine — and those apostates who do not deserve to live.  The others, losing their humanity, no longer matter.  Their death is no loss.

It’s not about God so much as it is about being human.  The ability to feel one’s common humanity is not exclusive to religion.  And, of course, hatred and contempt to not require sectarian differences and religious conflict to thrive.

But the sense of belonging to a common species is one of the crucial ideas at the heart of religion.  It is what we celebrate together, when we do.  And what we suffer from, when we don’t.

What Does it Mean?

According to a recent Pew poll, 18 percent of Americans believe that the President is a Muslim, and the percentage is growing.  Apparently, according to Time, a majority of Republicans believe it too.

Why do people believe what they do?  Common sense suggests it is because of the supporting evidence, the weight of reality.  In this case there doesn’t seem to be much evidence.  The President’s statements have been pored over and analyzed, and the few people who seem to have taken the trouble to examine what he said about his past and his religious convictions don’t seem to find any significant evidence for this particular belief.

But actually most of us seldom bother to review the evidence we have about anything we believe.  That’s not the point about beliefs.  Our convictions get established in our minds for essentially two reasons:  either they fit in with other things we believe or else they are believed by others, those who surround us.  The link with reality is second.

In this case, it seems clear that the first reason is true:  according to the Pew poll, “Beliefs about Obama’s religion are closely linked to political judgments about him. Those who say he is a Muslim overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance, while a majority of those who think he is a Christian approve of the job Obama is doing.” (See, “When Is a Muslim Not a Muslim.”)

No surprise.  That comes across in the news.  Those who call him a Muslim clearly don’t like him or trust him.

But the other reason for our beliefs suggests that this false conviction may continue to grow.  If more people believe something is true, that, in itself, becomes a source of conviction for others.  The others have to want to believe it first, of course, but then the convictions of like-minded others become “evidence,” and the process snowballs.  “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” people like to say.

Eventually, in circles where those ideas are repeated, it becomes more and more difficult not to believe.  It becomes an article of faith, a sign of membership in our communities.  To take a different position is to risk being seen as naïve or deluded, believing what “they” want you to believe.

That seems to be happening here.  And it will probably continue to happen, as the idea gets repeated and spreads.  Gossip, here, is more powerful and convincing than arguments or evidence.

This is yet another sign of how we are splitting up into opposing camps.  It seems an inexorable process of our politics and economy.  And that means that in the future there will be even less interest in evidence.

The Compassion Deficit

It’s not news anymore, but it’s still a surprise:  the poor are more generous than the rich. “For decades, surveys have shown that upper-income Americans … are particularly undistinguished as givers when compared with the poor…. lower-income Americans give proportionally more of their incomes to charity than do upper-income Americans.”  See, “The Charitable-Giving Divide” in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.

A PhD candidate at Berkeley, Paul Piff, recently repeated that finding – and more:  “lower-income people were more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than were those with more wealth. They were more attuned to the needs of others and more committed generally to the values of egalitarianism.”

It’s tempting to think that the rich are richer because they are more selfish or single-mindedly focused on their own advancement, but Piff’s research suggests otherwise.  His experiment primed subjects by showing sympathy inducing videos and encouraging them to imagine themselves in different financial circumstances.  That changed their reactions — for both sets of subjects.  In other words, the poor, imagining themselves rich, became less altruistic.   The rich, imagining themselves poor, became more generous to the destitute and ill.  Piff concluded:  “Empathy and compassion appeared to be the key ingredients” in the generosity of the poor.

If we think of this in group terms, it makes perfect sense.  Members of each group will identify with other members of the group to which they belong.  Their issues will resonate more deeply.  The rich will find it easier to give to the cultural institutions they and their friends patronize as well as the colleges and universities they attended.  The poor will give to the neighbors suffering from the same problems they are struggling with or to the causes closer to home.

As the gap between the rich and poor in our society grows – as it has been growing — this divide will only get greater.  Crossing over will not only be more difficult to accomplish economically, it will be harder for us to project ourselves imaginatively across it.  The rich will not get the point of extending unemployment insurance, and could even easily talk themselves into believing that such a helping hand might make workers lazy.  The poor will get bitter about the tax cuts the rich keep insisting will trickle down benefits for all.

In other words, the psychological effects of group process will intensify our social ills and make it more difficult for us to function politically as a whole.  It’s already on the edge of impossible.

What Is the Link?

A recent study appears to confirm that exercise can reduce anger. According to Nathaniel Thom, a stress physiologist, “exercise, even a single bout of it, can have a robust prophylactic effect” against the buildup of anger. (See, “Phys Ed – Can Exercise Moderate Anger?” in The New York Times Sunday Magazine)

Why is that a surprise?  Most therapists have a good, intuitive understanding of the link.  But it might be counter-intuitive to those who think anger is a negative and dangerous eruption in the brain.  How could something as positive and normal as exercise have an effect on an experience as toxic as anger is often thought to be?  On another level, some might wonder, how can the body affect the mind?

Anger is a normal and adaptive response to an attack or a threat.  It has been useful in our evolutionary struggle for survival.  The brain detects the danger and the body is aroused and energized to react with fight or flight.

Sometimes, of course, it gets out of hand.  Some people, clearly, see threats where there are none, or where the danger is minimal.  Their bodies get aroused inappropriately.  They could use some help in understanding the signals that trigger their responses, and finding ways to get their anger under better control.

According to The Times, researchers are trying to find the physiological and chemical roots of anger.  Meanwhile, Mr. Thom suggested: “if you know that you’re going to be entering into a situation that is likely to make you angry, go for a run first.”

Not a bad idea.  But the run might be useful not just because it works off some excess energy but also because it gives you a chance to think about what made you angry in the first place – or what you really want to do about it.

As a culture we seem to fear anger.  As this study implies, we want to find its physiological and chemical “causes,” as if it were a disease.  We are trying to convert a normal experience that is occasionally uncomfortable, like depression, into a pathology that can treated pharmacologically and eliminated.

The real danger is that researchers might actually succeed in finding such a pill.  We would then risk losing touch with the meaning our anger has for us as well as the energy it can provide.

The English poet William Blake once wrote:  “The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”  He had a point.  Well-directed anger, stemming from clarity of thought, gets through to others more effectively than platitudes.  And it can be a welcome relief.