Fear of the known

Are you ignoring the clear and present danger?.

I was unhappily driving my car on a Sunday afternoon after a family lunch at a new restaurant that served great food. I was unhappy because I enjoy the view almost always from the back seat while my driver wrestles with the insanity that prevails on our city roads. My gloom deepened when I got one of those annoying and unsolicited SMS messages that drive you round the bend. When we got home, I looked at the message perfunctorily and discovered that it was from some insurance company offering to renew my car insurance at a very competitive rate.

I sneered at the offending message and was about to delete it to oblivion when a sudden thought assailed me. I checked the files and discovered to my horror that I had actually forgotten to renew my insurance and the company that sent out the mass mailer SMS was right – my car’s insurance cover had indeed expired a week earlier. I felt cold all over thinking of the many lucky escapes I must have had over that last week. Net result being the fact that we could not use the car till the insurance cover was reinstated two days later. Meantime, the gibes of my family about my losing it left their scars on my psyche!

I wondered how many such events occur as a matter of routine in the corporate environment. How often do we tread dangerous paths merrily thinking we have the necessary insurance cover if we foul up? How many reminders of pitfalls do we ignore? How many whistle blowers do we listen to? Looking at the disaster visited upon all of us by the mavens of finance, it would appear that they had no fear of the known. They built tier upon tier of increasingly frightening risk and everyone including the regulators, who ought to provide the checks and balances, either applauded or acquiesced in this pyramid building game with a twist – the pointy end was at the bottom and the base at the top!

The results are too familiar to all of us – an economic tsunami of epic proportions that has roiled markets all over the world and an environment that is rife with misery and distrust for all of us.

I would argue that as much as we spend time thinking about potential threats it becomes incumbent on us to intensify our focus on the threats that exist in the here and now. There is the famous expression “Plain as the nose on your face” – time to acknowledge that nose on our face.

I have wondered how all of us make elementary mistakes that a child would have avoided. I feel this happens when we listen to so-called expert voices that tell us to commit harakiri and we thank them profusely for such advice. The rational part of our brain gets fogged over and irrational impulses take over and feed on themselves. Collective hysteria results. Maya shrouds our thinking. Supposedly rigorous logical analysis yields results that are a perverted inversion of what they should be. Individuals and organisations get stampeded into risky ventures and eagerly court disasters. Murphy is only too eager to oblige!

At times like this, I feel that it is important to listen to that inner voice that is constantly cautioning us to be careful. It is time to let the power of the sub-conscious mind take over and guide us. It is a very powerful but underrated and under-utilised resource at our command. The linear logical precepts dinned into our head from childhood make it difficult for us to accept the powers of the sub-conscious , which works in ways which go far beyond the reach of conscious logic . We end up ignoring the warning signals absurdly secure in our logical beliefs. It is not that one should ignore and act purely on what is called gut feel; it is only being suggested that we use logic to the extent that is needed and use the power of our sub-conscious mind to validate our actions when there is a logical eclipse. It is never one or the other; it ought to be a judicious blend of the two.

In good times and in tough times, I feel that this two-part exercise will prove critical in our avoiding dangers that lurk in our way; when we say that we are on the right track purely because our GPS navigational system tells us so even when we can see that the ground reality is telling us otherwise.

Good to remember the cautionary tale of the Emperor’s new clothes, where it was left to a child to blow the whistle on the fact that the emperor had no clothes on! A childlike approach is a most potent one when adult sensibilities are under attack. Perhaps it is what we know but do not make use of that we need to fear as much as, if not more than, what we actually do not know.

(The writer, M. Chandrasekaran, is advisor to 3i Infotech, Manipal Education & Medical Group and IDFC Pvt Equity.)