Return to the Planet of the Apes

John Berling Hardy — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:14:23 +0000

When asked about what my books are about my short answer is The Hidden Game that lies behind all our social interactions. The three most common replies to my response seem to be:

1. Will the book make money?
2. How is that knowledge useful?
3. No reply.

As I wrote the books I am more than a little put off by this general lack of enthusiasm towards my ‘revelations’. There are a number of different reasons why we might wish to find out more about the inner workings of the Game, these include:

• The desire to Win
• The desire to be Free
• The desire for Revenge
• The desire to Know

Different people with different temperaments, at different stages of life will have their own unique mix of motivations from the menu presented above. However, there is no one who can really afford to take the position taken by so many here in North America, that they are immune to the Game.

The Game literally defines our existence –that little box of reality we inhabit over the course of our lives. Ironically, those of us whose lives are most profoundly impacted by the game, those who have been so ensnared by the Game’s smoke and mirrors that it has come to define their world, resist it most.

To demonstrate the point; the moment you say to someone “Life is a Game!” -you are pretty well guaranteed to provoke a reaction of some sort. The Pragmatist will likely say, “I already know the Game” However, if you take it one step further and suggest that what they know is but the outer shell of the Game, the misdirection created to conceal the inner Game, then their smugness will usually turn to defensiveness and anger. Pragmatists have a deep need to believe that they are in control. A need to believe that they see all that there is to see. The notion that others might see what they do not, and then use it against them, is so off-putting, that they will not engage with it in any shape or form. Even framing it as an academic exercise, a kind of “What If?” scenario, is a non-starter.

The Idealist, the kind of person who celebrates all things green, those who live their lives loving their neighbours, will accept the existence of the Game as some conspiracy- something reserved for the elite. However, the moment you present them with the possibility that the Game is part of the human condition itself, and that there is no group, no matter how green, or high minded, that is of free from it, their eyes will glaze over, and they will simply disengage from any further discussion on the topic. In the battle between good and evil these individuals need to believe they represent good, their need for moral superiority is their Achilles’ Heel. The Players are very adept at turning this against them.

It is our own conceit, our own need to believe we are winners according to some definition, be it the desire for omniscience of the Pragmatist, or the moral superiority of the Idealist, that is one of the great hopes the players use the playoffs. It would no doubt come as a great shock to both groups to realize that they are both being played, and in equal measure.

It works in the following way – the Players set up a lime – something as arbitrary as the dictum “Hairy people are smarter!”. Those who are hairy become fans immediately. They will argue that they always suspected this to be the case, but society had not evolved to the point where they realized it. Those who are smooth-skinned will be inclined to resist this discovery. If they are stronger in character their opposition will be more militant. They will either directly oppose it with demonstrations in the street or will attempt to subvert it in some way. If they are of a more passive, compliant nature they will buy into this perception, and come to see themselves as inferior, lacking in some way. From time to time they will fall for slick pitches like “Look like a baboon within a week!” selling chest wigs or special elixirs designed to induce prolific hair growth on limbs and torso.

It would appear that in the Hairy Game there are also winners and losers. What all will be missing is that they are all being played, all being led by the nose; that in the final analysis, to the extent that they place any importance on herrings at all, they’re all losers!

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The Selfish Gene Revisited

John Berling Hardy — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:42:33 +0000

The last part of this series I wish to devote to what I regard as the most insidious and venal aspect of the Game –that being what I refer to as the ‘knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing’ syndrome. the gigantic marketing machine of the Game, pumps out an endless stream of images of the good life – beautiful, svelte, youngish people, bearing their teeth in the midst of orgasmic joy. They thank their Creator not for being alive, but for being who they are. All that is subtle or serene,; all that might ennoble or inspire us; is drowned out by all the noise.

The Game’s architects, not content to simply bombard our senses, go to great lengths to prove to us that our seeking something more than their fabricated reality they ram down our throats is sheer folly on our part. Polemicists like Richard Dawkins devote years of study and hundreds of pages of text to enlightening us, helping us to see that our faith in something innately good in our fellow man is completely misplaced. When one person gives another a helping hand, with no apparent benefit to themselves, we are not allowed to simply take it one face value as being a spontaneous act of kindness. They must somehow taint it the selfish impulse. The Selfish Gene, no less! It well may be that there is not an ounce of human kindness in Richard Dawkins, but why must he condemn us all to the same fate.

Such books are presented as breakthroughs, yet the main thrust of Dawkins argument was anticipated by Freud over 70 years before, Nietzsche before him, and Schopenhauer before him. This is precisely the kind of seductive logic employed by the snake in the Garden of Eden. In pulling God down from the heavens, they seek to ascend to the Heavens and take their place. In the 19th century, Gogol wrote a famous parody entitled The diary of a Madman. It is a first hand account of a day in the life of low level clerk in Saint Petersburg who wakes us up one morning believing himself to be the King of Spain. This would not be so bad if it were not for the fact that those around them show no inclination to share his delusion. Clinging to their own sense of reality, they fail to see him as anything more than a low level clerk. even when the clerk is taken away, and incarcerated in a mental asylum, he still clings fast to his delusion, feeling a kind of pity for those around them in a kind of ‘Forgive them Lord they know not what they do’ sort of way.

Maybe Dawkins has it all backwards; it is not we who are deluded, but they themselves. The only difference is that in our world the ‘Kings of Spain’, instead of being incarcerated, sit atop thrones!

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The Neo-Libertarian Lie

John Berling Hardy — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:20:51 +0000

As the economist Hayek compellingly argued in 1947, the only mechanism through which an almost infinite number of producers, consumers, buyers, and sellers, can seamlessly connect is the price mechanism of the free market. It is the linchpin of the capitalist system, that which allowed capitalism to prevail over communism.

This complete reliance upon the pricing mechanism would lead us to think that it’s proper functioning should be the first priority of our governing bodies. For this mechanism to sustain itself, safeguards must be in place to ensure that buyers and sellers in the market are in a relatively equal bargaining position. For this to be the case, the following needs to be true:

• No seller or buyer is able to secure a permanent advantage over time
• All buyers and sellers have equal access to information and to markets
• Information must be reliable and transparent, free of inaccuracy or manipulative phrasing conveying the false impression to consumers

This is more or less the libertarian argument. Without belabouring the point, it should be taken as self evident that in the business world not a single one of the above conditions is met. We all know from personal experience that those with size, power and influence fare far better than those who are lacking in these attributes and the big only get bigger with time. Information is not of uniform quality and not evenly distributed. Advertising is more focused on emotions than on logic – our selection between Sony and Panasonic, Ford and GM, Apple and Microsoft, is not based on a rational cost-benefit analysis, so much as upon a jumble of intangibles and half truths (of which we’re only semi-conscious).

Nothing is perfect, over time all systems become corrupted. This has been true since Roman times. The problem in the case of Capitalism is that the system was subverted from its very inception. In order to induce the average man to part with their hard earned kopecks, the risks of the market are downplayed, or blatantly misrepresented with bogus accounting.

In reality the average man is better off gambling his earnings at a casino where he can see the dice, or the roulette wheel and calculate the odds for themselves. When it comes to the markets the only thing he knows for certain is that that which is presented is false in some way. He can also know that there are others, far better positioned relative to the market themselves, who enjoy a permanent built-in advantatage. Finally he knows that he has no way of accurately assessing just how great his disadvantage actually is. taking these facts together the one certainty that remains, the single fixed point we can absolutely be sure of, is that regardless of what long-term strategy we might choose, the longer he holds any given position the greater the likelihood of losing. Imagining that you can improve your odds by moving from one security into another is like continuously changing lanes in a weekend traffic jam. The most you can achieve is to keep yourself distracted, drive up your heart rate, use up more fuel, and annoy other motorists on the road.

Does this mean that all players other than the insiders are doomed to lose in the end? Not necessarily! Certainly the vast majority who follow any conventional technical or fundamental approach will lose. However, all systems are imperfect. The clever player is able to turn the system back upon itself!

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Fear and Greed.

John Berling Hardy — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:19:50 +0000

Talk to any financial trader, investor, or guru, and they will tell you that markets run on fear and greed – success depends upon banking on the fear and greed of others, while managing to keep your own in check.

The gurus will talk about financial strategies, trend forecasting, intrinsic value and the fundamentals, etc. The trader, the frontline soldier, will use metaphors such as ‘playing’ the market, or ‘beating’ the market. Of all of these, I believe it to be the trader, the front line soldiers, who are the closest to having it right.

This enormous edifice of the financial industry, with its high technology, mountains of analysis, legions of experts in gray and blue suits, completely rests upon something as banal, vulgar and prosaic as a simple marketplace. In its essence this market is no different than a vegetable market in an open square in an old town in Europe or the Middle East.

This brings to mind something I witnessed during a short consulting assignment for the EBRD in Albania. It was back in the early 1990s, shortly after the fall of the totalitarian dictatorship of Enver Hoxha and had prevailed for several decades. The entire economy was in a shambles – the Ministry of Finance and National Bank were both housed in a single turret-like building in the middle of the main square of Tirana. Its staff, no more than a dozen are so, had no previous experience in finance. Yet, despite this, the economy managed to keep running. A powerful illustration of this was the fact that the variance between the official and black market exchange rate between the Lek (the local currency) and hard currencies was within 1 to 2%. How was this possible?

Situated immediately beside the Turret was the financial black market exchange. Here about 15 to 20 traders armed with nothing more than pocket calculators took your Marks or Dollars and provided you with Leks (the local currency). The physical proximity, as well as the parity in technology, created the ideal conditions for an efficient market. Information passed freely and the market responded almost instantaneously.

Should the National Bank have been wiped off the face of the earth, or the Ministry of Finance disappeared in a puff of smoke, no one would have even noticed- there would have been next to no impact whatsoever on the economy. Meanwhile, should this makeshift currency exchange ceased to exist; the entire economy of Albania would have come to a screeching halt.

So far I have argued that the markets are pure expressions of fear and greed – nothing too new in that. What is of interest is where this leads us. Fear and greed are based on collective perceptions of events, not on the events themselves. The trader is not really interested in reality as such, only on how people are likely to respond to their perception of it. Taking this a step further, if you can manage perception and predict how the market will react to a given stimuli, you can manage outcomes and thereby effectively creating reality. This is the alchemy of the market –the secret that lies behind the Game.

Returning to the edifice of the financial industry- their function is not so much to interpret reality as it is to create it. They are the architects of the illusion that our system is rationally motivated, efficient, and equitable. In the next blog in the series I will look at the way in which this is done. Stay tuned!

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The Devil’s Advocate (or Beware the Christ-like)

John Berling Hardy — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:41:49 +0000

At some point in the course of our journey through life, we all encounter those people who simply cannot think ill of others. So pure of heart are these folks, that even entertaining the notion that those who do harm to others should do so out of malevolence, rather than misguidedness, is simply unfathomable. These good Christians will steadfastly maintain that those who steal, those who lie, those who manipulate others, suffer from a distorted worldview – they basically mean well, but either through mental defect, or lack of education, are not able to fully think through the consequences of their actions. Ever since childhood I have been frustrated and intrigued by this particular quirk of the Anglo-Saxon culture. I have come to refer to it as the ‘see no evil’ syndrome.

Over the last few months I had the privilege of having lengthy discussions with two prominent members of the London Financial scene, one an international risk management specialist, the other the dean of a prestigious business school. Both men are acknowledged experts on corporate malfeasance, regularly invited to give keynote addresses on the topic.

In both cases the discussion was most enlightening and stimulating. However, when I broached the possibility that much of this malfeasance was the result of collusion at the highest levels, meticulously planned and choreographed, rather than the result of a few bad apples in a basically sound system – both men had a conspicuously similar reaction- finding the notion simply inconceivable, and the suggestion on my part tasteless and off-putting.

The position shared by both, delivered most eloquently, in exquisite prose, and Oxbridge accents, was that this was all the result of gross ineptitude at the highest levels. I, incredulous, argued that it would seem beyond the boundaries of plausibility to imagine that people educated in the finest academic institutions, with decades of experience behind them, could have, let all what has come to pass take place out of sheer oversight.

Looking back, in my naiveté, what I was failing to see was the positioning of those I was speaking with in relation to the big Game – the dean being a gatekeeper to, the consultant, a gray eminence for the very Players who perpetrated the 2008 Crash.

At the risk of coming off as a tad ‘negative’, I would suggest that this ‘see no evil’ attitude is far from benign. This brings to mind a memory from my time as a builder, when I had occasion to ask an architect (British, as it turns out) to explain the principles behind chimney constructions – specifically, how one ensured that the smoke from the fire went up the chimney instead of into the room. The architect’s response was the following: “Entire books have been written on the topic of chimneys”. He delivered this sentence with such profound solemnity, and with such self assurance, that I immediately aborted any further investigation, convinced that the knowledge I was seeking was the sacred domain of an elite sect of geniuses who guarded their secrets closely (lest this knowledge should fall into the wrong hands, and the world would be consumed by chaos).

The motivation behind this high minded stance, in fact the mandate of these esteemed experts, is to obfuscate the problem, rather than fix it. Experts at blinding us with science, generously spicing their rhetoric with the jargon of high finance, they wax poetic on the complexity of today’s financial world, and the difficulty of sorting all of this out.
All this posturing on the part of esteemed experts is meant to distract us from the ugly reality- that being that the system spawned by these poseurs is rotten to the core, and beyond redemption. No new set of regulations, no new investigative committee, no change of government, will ever set it right.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.[1]

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The Burden Of Proof

John Berling Hardy — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:30:38 +0000

If one wishes to be taken seriously in this world of ours, it is important not to be seen as shooting from the hip – a few anecdotal examples do not a theory make! Therefore, we painstakingly research our points, we find studies that support our assertions, and we refer to acknowledged authorities in the field. In other words, we build a case supported by objective, verifiable evidence.

These studies – do we know the assumptions that support their findings? And these acknowledged experts- do we know the earlier triumphs upon which their present largesse is based? No! We assume these experts know more than us, and that these studies are honestly executed, logically consistent, and produce meaningful findings because… Because everyone says so!

So we give our experience, our insight, our innate wisdom, a backseat to studies that have been commissioned by parties with vested interests in their findings, and to experts connected to institutions that define the status quo. In this way the prevailing view can find copious amounts of ‘objective’ support, but the naysayer, the maverick, is hard pressed to find any credible’ support for their contentions.

Now comes the paradox – we cannot be absolutely sure of that which is scientifically verifiable either. Scientists will be the first to admit that absolute certainty does not exist, and the most we can hope for is a high degree of confidence in the fact that something, or some causal relationship, appears to hold true, under a certain set of conditions.

As an aside, wishing to base our world view on something hard, like facts, rather than something soft, like inference and conjecture, we demand that our reality be verifiable. The scientific process is rigorous and restrictive. The problem is that only a small subset of reality can be proven scientifically. Just because something falls outside this narrow sliver of reality does not mean that it is not true, or that he cannot attest to it’s validity.

So in this way scientific validity has become the bludgeon with which the status quo attempts to pre-emptively deflect any opposition to that which is held to be true. As the Players well know, this truth itself is nothing more than pure fabrication. From where they are perched, it is of little consequence what nonsense we choose to subscribe to, one myth is as good as another; just so long as we are all ensnared in the ironclad conviction, that our model, our particular ruse, our particular parody of reality, is God’s truth!

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The G20 Debacle

John Berling Hardy — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:20:02 +0000

Toronto is a pretty tame place; the kind of place where nothing ever happens. The population is calm, conservative; all are great believers in the sanctity of law and order. There are no radical groups of any size. Militancy of any kind is almost non-existent.

Thus on the surface, one might assume this would be an ideal place to hold the G20 Summit. Despite this, the security budget for the summit was projected at over $200 million (over 6 times the figure of the previous G20 Summit). The Canadian public perceived this sum as absurdly high, yet the politicians only gave the most perfunctory justification for the exorbitant bill. To add insult to injury, a couple of weeks prior to the event this sum inexplicably ballooned to nearly $1 billion.

Major parts of the city were cordoned off like a high security prison, all under the pretext of protecting the security of the participants in the conference. After all the hoopla and expense, what was achieved? No one who lives in or around Toronto escaped being inconvenienced, frustrated and irritated by the oppressive security measures. Meanwhile, the professional anarchists, having no chance of getting anywhere near the summit events, not wishing to appear completely ineffectual, had to content themselves with smashing windows along the route of the demonstration. Finally, the city’s business owners, normally the beneficiaries of such summits, lost money because the city was turned into a ghost town, as all who could, fled the city for the duration of the event.

All this demonstrates the inherent flaws in the assumption that security must be tight and in clear view to all to be effective. In making control overt, you give those who wish to subvert your efforts the blueprints to do it with. By making it blatant, the security measures morph into being symbols of oppression- intimidating those already inclined to be compliant, while provoking and providing public sympathy to the subversive elements in society. The vandalism, which would ordinarily have offended the average Canadian, became instead a kind of vicarious expression of their own frustration. The police, after spending an absolute fortune on security, came off appearing incompetent and ineffective. Finally, the taxpayers are saddled with a bill they did not support, for an event they never desired, all in aid of international initiatives no one really understands.

However, there is an example of a completely different approach to security. One in which nearly perfect security is achieved imperceptibly- the Antwerp Diamond Exchange, one of the most secure places on the planet. It has been in place for several centuries with no significant modifications to the way business is carried on. Millions of dollars worth of diamonds exchange hands completely out in the open, in view of any passer-by, with no visible security anywhere in sight. As implausible as this utopian, laissez-faire structure appears to be, this model has been in continuous existence for some 500 years.

To the uninformed bystander the public square which houses the diamond exchange appears to be nothing more than a typical square in the old town, immaculately restored, but no more so than any of its neighbouring squares. Meanwhile, embedded in the tableau, one can see couriers in traditional orthodox Jewish long black robes, are walking to and fro across the square. Only the speed of their gait, and the seriousness of their demeanour, convey any hint of their purpose- conveying millions of dollars of uncut diamonds in small pouches tucked in their pockets.

The security is provided by undercover police disguised as shopkeepers, shoppers, a pair of lovers sitting at a café, etc. When the messengers meet; pouches are exchanged, with each then proceeding on their way. No paper changes hands; no inspection of the merchandise takes place- it is all done on trust.

During the centuries that this market has been in this square, great technological advances have been made in our society. We passed from the agricultural, through the industrial, into the electronic, and information ages. Nonetheless, this low-tech marketplace remains unsurpassed in the world, in terms of its efficiency, security and simplicity. The Antwerp Diamond Market is the model of control without restrictions. It is formless form at its finest. The flow of transactions is smooth and completely fluid, without compromising security. By way of contrast, the recent violence at the G20 summit in Toronto graphically illustrates the perils of taking the more traditional approach to security. One is left wondering precisely what the powers that be will have learned form this debacle?

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The Noble Lie

John Berling Hardy — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:53:27 +0000

As much as we like to think we are fully conscious rational beings who char their own destiny, at best we are co-creators of our reality. Most of our waking hours are spent in one trance or another. This is because full consciousness is simply too exhausting to sustain for anything more than a brief interval. Once we become familiar with anything, we transform it into a kind of subroutine which we come to perfom automatically. For any society, or group for that matter, to function successfully there musgt be a shared trance that binds them together.

All trances are kept in place by a set of beliefs. Often these are in turn tied to a single core presupposition. The Ancient Greek philosopher Plato referred to this as the Noble Lie. The Noble Lie that lays beneath the Player Culture that has come to dominate not only our organizations, but our society, is the belief “this is the way it is”. The belief that this restrictive order is an immutable fact of life. If you recall from the Prologue this is precisely the way in which Machiavelli presents his rules of realpolitik. The clear implication: even contemplating resisting this ‘fact of life’ is childish and as futile as charging at windmills.

The vulnerability of this belief is that it is an absolute condition, therefore if we can create but one exception, one single instance which is proved to be sustainable; the seeds of doubt have been sown. From there it is only a matter of time before the bubble bursts, and the structure created by the Circle Square Pattern crumbles.

Placing this in the context of our organization, the initial response to any new direction that does not conform to this worldview will be to resist it, or simply ignore it, treating it as yet another phoney directive, or hoax that senior management wishes to pull one over on the ranks. However, once concrete evidence begins to appear that there is substance behind the words, non compliance is forgiven, and imitative is rewarded, attitudes will begin to change.

With the possible exception of the Players, all of us have a real need to believe in something, take pride in their work, and feel their input can make a difference. Decades of evidence to the contrary has jaded most of us, such that by middle age we have unwittingly given up on life. These dreams do not disappear; instead they lay dormant, held in a kind of psychic suspense file. Once the conditions in our day to day lives begin to support our childhood optimism, they we will once again come to the surface.

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“Everyone is a Salesman!”

John Berling Hardy — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:31:13 +0000

No man is an island! Being social animals, our success in this world very much depends on our ability to get along with others. This includes our ability to communicate with others, to influence others, to convince them of the worth of both ourselves, and our ideas. Thus, we are always selling in one way or another. Sounds logical enough! In fact we have all heard this so many times before, that it is practically self evident. The only problem is that it is unadulterated bullshit.

Equating teaching teenagers about the ideals of the French revolution, or attempting to convince your toddler to go to bed tonight, are not the same as selling vacuum cleaners, or financial services.

True, they all involve some form of persuasion that much is undeniable. However, what distinguishes the latter examples from the former is that for the teacher and the parent it is done for the benefit of the students and the toddler. In the case of the sale, the salesman stands to benefit. In fact this benefit is the primary motivation for the entire exchange.

By blurring this distinction, selling is elevated, somehow ennobled. At the same time, persuasion that which is altruistic is minimized, or even invalidated. Everything becomes reduced to one simple common denominator – selling! For many people compulsive self-promotion and selling has become so deeply ingrained, that they literally do not know when to stop. For such people, selling does not stop in the boardroom, or in the showroom, but extends to friends, neighbours, and the family alike.

In the best case selling is selective truth; in the worst case it is outright misleading. What it does not do is convey the whole truth, as we would be asked to do in a court of law. Truth may be subjective, but when we are embellishing, or editing to convey an impression we are misleading others in some way. Technically, we’re not lying, in the legal sense. But in the moral sense, we most certainly are.

The typical justification of the salesman is that we all do it, we all have to make a buck somehow. This is the morality of the herd –which is not morality, but tribal group think masquerading as ethics.

The horror of it is that these days, all are compelled to sell. Teachers have to jump through hoops to amuse their students, university professors are evaluated on how much their students enjoy their lectures, and parents have to compete with cartoon characters and sanitized versions of classic fairy tale characters to communicate values to their children.

In such a world to not sell, to refrain from embellishing and entertaining, to simply tell it as you see it, is to be inaudible. You simply do not register, you do not count, and you do not exist.

Another more insidious consequence of this “everyone is a salesman” mindset is that it implies that the market is the ultimate arbiter of value. If something does not sell, it is not of value. This progressively crowds out anything whose deliverables to the consumer can not be squeezed into a sound byte, while promoting that which titillates the senses and appeals to the vanity. Over time we become progressively more indulgent, superficial and addicted.

Ultimately, it has taken us to where we find ourselves today as a society: relating to one another only as Buyers and Sellers, nothing more. The filter through which we hear is “what is in it for me now?” In order for our message to get out there, to not get lost in all the noise out there, we talk louder, faster, longer, – all the while saying next to nothing!

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The Competition Paradox

John Berling Hardy — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:32:32 +0000

Competition is good! Is this necessarily so in all cases? Certainly, no competition is a bad thing – state control, or monopolies are inefficient, and reward the few at the expense of the many.

So if no competition is bad, and competition is good, then it only stands to reason that more competition can only be better. It provides consumers with more choice, and forces the producers to up their game. This then is the classic non-sequitor, the Noble Lie supporting our cult – the Cult of Capitalism!

The greater the competition, the greater the pressure! In the beginning, producers work better, and smarter to beat the competition. The problem starts when they run out of ways to improve their competitiveness, but the pressure within the system keeps growing. What happens next?

Sooner or later, out of sheer necessity some of the competitors start bending, or even breaking the rules. If these few are successful in avoiding detection, the others will be compelled to follow suit if they wish to avoid falling behind. Ultimately, the situation arises where the player in the game is left with a simple choice – break the rules and risk the penalty, or stick to the straight and narrow, and go under.

Now let’s turn to the BP oil spill in the Gulf. This is very likely what lay behind the scenario that led to the disaster. The drilling company was ordered to increase capacity. Wishing to remain in business, they complied. The person at British Petroleum demanding the increase was no doubt under similar pressure, and this would then carry all the way up the line to the top. In the pressure driven environment the ultimatum presented to all those in positions of authority is: do what it takes, or we will find someone else who will.

This paying forward of pressure cannot go on interminably. Sooner or later it comes up against an immovable object – in this case Mother Nature herself. Singling out one of the links in the chain, and attempting to attribute blame to it is a complete waste of time. Once the decision to deep sea drill was made, an irreversible chain of events was set in motion that could have but one final outcome- disaster. We cannot know which rig will be the one to fail, or when it will fail, but that some rig somewhere will cause a catastrophic failure is almost guaranteed.

We can improve technology, tighten regulations, but so long as the pressure keeps building and building we can only expect more of the same. What was deemed as an acceptable risk turned out to be unacceptable? How many other similar decisions have been made, where risks are high, corruption is systemic, under highly specialized conditions is involved just waiting to explode?

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