Development and the removal of choice

Africa has joined the urbanisation binge that the world is on, and is catching up fast. Lagos is set to be one of the biggest cities in the world soon, rivalling the likes of Tokyo and Shanghai, and our very own Gauteng megacity (if that is still the strategy for Gauteng) also fills me with awe with its sheer scale and sprawl.

But you will note that I no longer live in Jozi. I discovered somewhere along the way of my life so far, that I need to be close to nature. I developed the habit of climbing Arthur’s Seat whenever I needed to be alone with my thoughts at varsity, and have never shaken that need. One of the reasons I chose to live in Cape Town is exactly that, too: I can smell the sea and see the mountains. Nature is all around me, and it keeps me calm.

And so it makes me profoundly sad to think that Africa, the last great untouched wilderness, is giving in to the greed and ugliness of industrialisation, modernisation and “development”. Without sounding too esoteric, I often wonder whether modernisation was the downfall of our species – that we were happiest when we were in touch with nature and each other in the Garden of Eden / Avatar’s Pandora / whatever metaphor you like. I think many “indigenous cultures” have more wisdom and fulfilment in them than any modern ones do, and that the modern world is full of the exact distractions that keep us from attaining true happiness, in the Buddhist sense. Having a great expanse of untouched nature is necessary in order to restore and replenish us when we feel overwhelmed.

But aside from that hippy train of thought, the world would be a richer, more interesting place for everybody if it kept some of its diversity intact. Variety is the spice of life and all that. Even if you love the city, it is boring and monotonous to cover the whole world in it. Surely everyone should have the right to escape the modern world if they choose to?

But they don’t have that right.

Because everyone should also have the right to make of their lives what they will. And spreading opportunities requires spreading economic growth. Rural Africans have the same right to become doctors or physicists or actors as Americans or Japanese or Germans do. If we believe in equality of opportunity as an ideal for human society (and I don’t believe there is anyone left on earth who does not), then we necessitate getting all human societies to a certain level of wealth in order to offer people within them opportunities.

It is a strange thing to get our heads around: we pursue economic growth in order to give people opportunity and choice. And yet, in so doing, we obliterate their choice to opt out of industrialisation. It’s sadly ironic that such a high percentage of people in the already fast-paced and modern cities yearn to live in nature, while so many in the “developing world” dream of the opportunities of cities.

It is a crisis of geography, and freedom of movement. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if, instead of turning the entire planet into one generic city with opportunities for all no matter where you are, we interviewed every child or family and asked them the kind of life they would like to lead? Those who wanted modern lives could be placed in flourishing modern cities to pursue their dreams. And those who wanted to fish or farm or live humble lives in nature could be placed in the jungles, mountains or coasts that make them happy. The injustice of unequal development would be removed, because it would no longer be an accident of geography, but an individual choice. And those “undeveloped” regions of the world could be proud of all the wonder that is in them, that today, they seem so keen to forget. 

Branding your Plumber

I am for the little guy. I really am. It's the reason I love the "buy local" movement, independent publishers, artisan brewers. It's the reason I use MTN. Okay, they're not so little, but they are the younger brother; the upstart, the second-to-market. So while I spend my days thinking about how to craft powerful brands for clients, part of me always loves when people choose not to buy brands. When they hand-make something. Or buy from a friend.

But I challenge anyone out there to be for the little guy when it comes to plumbing. Over the past few days I have had experiences that would have me all over Hello Peter if there were organisations behind them to bitch about. First off, my geyser went cold. Annoying, but these things happen. I called a plumber - who my flatmate randomly found in the Yellow Pages. He arrived, was very sweet, spent the afternoon up in my roof and left. He billed me nearly a grand, but I appreciate that there were parts he needed to buy. But how, exactly, did he get to that figure? He seemed to make it up on the spot when I asked what I owed him.

Skip to 30 hours later. I'm in bed, reading. My neighbour phones me to tell me my geyser has burst. I run through to my bathroom and see boiling hot water pouring through the ceiling. I run around like a headless chicken for a bit, decide the wisest thing to do is to phone my mother, 980kms away, and fight with her about where the water main is. It turns out, it's in my downstairs neighbour's garden UNDER A DECK. We had to unscrew all the decking and remove the planks to be able to turn off the water.

So by this point I have realised two things:
1) the previous owner was a stupid tit (but good with his hands)
2) Plumber A had no idea what he was doing.

Because of point 2 above, I called Plumber B (yes, sourced from the Yellow Pages). Plumber B tells me that the thermostat was broken (the one that Plumber A had installed the day before) and replaces the valve that blew. When I asked what I owe he replied, off the top of his head, "seven-hundred." Then he thought about that for a bit and said "that sounds a bit cheap. It was R1000." Clearly by then I looked more baffled by the process than horrified by the price yet (which I was, but my facial expressions can only do one thing at a time) so he added, for good measure "minus VAT."

And that's not it. He then proceeded to give me a speech about how my geyser is old and is going to blow again soon. Why doesn't he replace it now? I ask. He doesn't recommend it. And that judgement was given with the sage finality that I should just say thank you and move on with my life. He looked Anna Wintour-esque when I insisted, "but why don't you recommend it?" "The insurance won't pay" He told me. "Come to think of it, it was all very badly installed in the beginning. I doubt that it's SABS approved. The insurance probably won't pay even when it does blow."

It was then that I decided I hate plumbers. Each and every one (and I've spent my whole life arguing against generalisations). And in plumbing, I hate the little guy. Because if there were a big branded company, you would know who you are going to get. You would have a sense of who to trust and who is no good. Or at least where to look. There would be professionalism, and some transparency about billing. There would be a process to deal with my dissatisfaction. And, most importantly, I would be able to smear their name if they disappointed me so wildly. But there is no mass revolt I can launch against these plumbers, because no one knows who they are anyway, and no one thinks to asks their friends for advice when they need a plumber. So their reputation is protected by their insignificance and I am left writing an angry diatribe, with a geyser that's probably going to burst again, while they drink Mojitos on my money.

The Loquacious Popularity Contest

Shakespeare would have hated Twitter. And not only because all modern communication forces us to condense whatever we’re saying into easily digested, tiny nuggets of scan-friendly information. Not only because our “Glance-and-Click culture” (to use Seth Godin’s genius term for it) has damaged our ability to engage with prose, to have the patience it takes to let something beautiful and transformative emerge from the storyteller. But also because writing today is as much a popularity contest as it is a display of insightful observation and a natural way with words.

Take my friend Simon. He writes very, very well. He’s published all over the place. And a good deal of his time is spent manning social media channels, chipping in with his opinion, responding to comments. He is also a very amiable person offline, completely at ease making friends at bars with a beer in his hand, getting worked up about the stuff he believes in and arguing with people about things. And the result of all of this, of course, is that he has very many friends. And very many fans and followers. His travel update emails no longer even display the recipient addresses for fear of overwhelming them.

Were he ever to write a book, his audience would already be there. His market may be untapped, but it is identifiable and quantifiable. And I would hazard a guess that most publishers today take into account the size of a writer’s social network before agreeing to sign them. This seems like a new era for writers, that requires an entirely new skill set. I’ve always imagined the Shakespeares and Hemmingways and Patons of this world to have been reclusive, introverted and quiet. And perhaps those kinds of writers will no longer cut it.

The Importance vs Urgency Matrix

Being the ultimate nerd that I am, I attended a webinar on time management on Thursday. Actually it's less about nerdy proactiveness and more about survival. I felt I was teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown a month ago, and I've seen enough people older than me to know that we only get more balls in the air, more to deal with and more to cram into our days until we're about sixty. To be overwhelmed by 26 is relatively embarrassing.

The hosts of the webinar had English-midlands accents, a slow, serious way of speaking and exuded whatever the opposite of charisma is. The whole experience was so washed out and linoleumy that I felt like I was in an episode of The Office. And all the matrices and quadrants they introduced did was to try and help people separate the urgent from the important.

I unplugged my earphones before the hour was up, pissed off that I'd lost time that I needed to put together a presentation.

It was only this morning that I realised that's not just a handy skill for effective time management. The inability to see the difference between what is important and what is urgent is responsible for pretty much every dysfunction of the modern world. It's why we mindlessly pursue economic growth at the expense of the planet and our survival. It's why we lose touch with friends because we're always rushing to a meeting. Urgency gives us an adrenaline rush. The adrenaline hooks us. And then we wake up at 65 and realise we've wasted our whole lives chasing unimportant things.

Maybe these quadrants will save the world.

Our global story

There were some incredible speakers at the TEDx in Stellenbosch on Friday. Lots of inspiration and some amazing work being done to end child slavery globally (it's everywhere, apparently), stimulate entrepreneurship in South Africa and help uplift women. The budding digital marketer in me loved hearing about how social media had triumphed over print media in reversing international public opinion about South Africa during the World Cup. And I even got to learn about the global and barbaric persecution of sharks (though the speaker failed to mention why they are so important. It turns out they keep oxygen-generating plankton levels healthy in the oceans and without them we will suffocate. But I had to find that out from my brother)

But the most interesting talk at TEDx, I thought, was Peter Willis's The Story of our Future. He made the point that never before has there been a singular global narrative; there have only been regional dominant narratives. And that human beings cannot function without a story. It's hardwired into our understanding of the world that there are beginnings, actions and consequences. We are motivated by stories with happy endings.

And so the dominant stories we told ourselves, and that provided context for all our actions, were:

• In Medieval society, that God was  at the top of a hierarchical universe, in which everyone knew his or her place, and being humble and obedient and doing what was expected of you guaranteed you a place in Heaven.

• In the Scientific Age, that the Universe functions on rules, and that if you study and learn all the rules, you can know everything worth knowing and alter the world to make it cooperate.

• The current dominant story is that of capitalist growth. That if you work hard and buy things and spend money, you will be guaranteed a place in the mythical and always-just-out-of-reach Consumer Heaven.

The problem, of course, is that this story is rubbish. Consumer Heaven does not exist and does not make us happy, but, more importantly, the planet is finite, her resources are finite, and capitalist growth is simply unsustainable. And so we are confronted with a very bleak story: if we continue along our current path, we will destroy ourselves. If we do not, we may survive. "Maybe surviving" isn't much of a happy ending to believe in or motivate ourselves. Which is why, perhaps, there is such widespread inaction about our crisis.

The task we face, therefore, is not just one of proving the science of climate change. That has largely been done, and isn't galvanising people into action. Our task is to collectively define a narrative to believe in. And his suggestion, which echoes my man Ekhart Tolle, is that Heaven is right here. I'm thinking we need to make that a little more ordinary sounding for politicians and business leaders to get their heads around.

You know you've arrived

Since name-dropping seemed to be the favourite activity of the organiser of TEDx Stellenbosch (she must have mentioned the fact that she studied at Harvard as many times as ordinary people use the word "and"), I think it's safe to mention that I was stopped by no less than five people who wanted to know about my laptop bag. That's right people, five. And one of them even wanted a photo.

After 18 months in Cape Town, I'm finally a trendoid.

The meaning of work

My flatmate and I were discussing some work this afternoon, and how we find it almost impossible to motivate ourselves when we're not interested in something. Our initial hypothesis was that we are spoilt brats, torch-bearers of the Entitled Generation. But then, we are also very good at convincing ourselves we don’t have any flaws, and so we came to a second hypothesis: that girls (and, for the purposes of this theory, gay guys) are wired differently to men.

Men can emotionally disengage from whatever they are doing. If they are good at it, that is enough for them. They can sit in front of a spreadsheet all day or crunch numbers and watch stock markets. Skills and intelligence in exchange for money. A rational, simple transaction. We, on the other hand, need to see the bigger picture, know what the work is going to be used for. And, most importantly, we need to believe in what we are doing. It needs to make a positive difference to the world and mean something. Work is an emotional investment

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why men earn so much more than women. We have got to the bottom of it. It’s not prejudice. It’s not a secret community or a global old boy’s club. It’s the fact that meaning is a lot more difficult to find than projects or tasks that need to be done.

This time for Africa

So there is a lot of buzz about the World Cup fanning the flames of xenophobia. The City of Cape Town is apparently making preparations to protect immigrants and minorities in the townships once it's over. I really, really hope I'm not missing something - but this all seems to be journalists feeling uncomfortable with constant good news and feeling like they need to bring up something scary in order to sound intelligent. 

Nationalism is a pretty scary thing. Aside from religion, it has probably killed more people than any other ideology. But it is a bittersweet pill, because nationalism also helps to build great things. It unites people in a common dream which, I think, is necessary to form a peaceful and functioning society. The trick is to balance the heart-lifting feeling of "us" without creating an exclusionary "them". And the only way to do that is to ensure the sense of nationality comes from living in a place, not from genetics or bloodlines. It needs to be an "opt-in" nationalism; whereby if you live in South Africa, believe in South Africa and want to help build it, you're a South African.  And I think that is the kind of nation we are trying to build.

And as for our African brethren, the World Cup has done a lot to foster a feeling of continental community. It has always been the African World Cup. Shakira has us all singing "this time for Africa" at the top of our lungs in the streets. And never have I felt such a strong sense of unity as on Tuesday night, when everyone in Cape Town was bedecked in orange to rally behind Netherlands for the simple reason that their opponents (Uruguay) had been the team to kick "our" Ghanaian team out of the World Cup. The world cup has fostered pride in where we come from without making us exclusionary at all. In fact, we have been delighting the world with our genuine interest in other cultures and other stories.

It may have been luck that we never played against another African country, but we didn't. Instead, the World Cup helped us to rally behind our neighbours and take pride in ourselves; a serendipitous leap towards the right kind of national community, and away from the horrors of the 2009 xenophobic attacks. I really hope we keep it up