At Paco's urging, I am posting my commentary on Risk from Dreams, Bones & the Future: Queries & Speculations. Warning: it's a long read but pertinent to the times.

The pre-eminent work considering the history and dynamics of risk is Peter Bernstein’s 1996 book, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. Bernstein argues that “the revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern time and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than the whim of the gods and that men and women are not passive before nature.” The story is about the mathematicians whose work “put the future at the service of the present.” He writes, “by showing the world how to understand risk, measure it, and weigh its consequences, they converted risk-taking into one of the prime catalysts that drives modern Western society.” It was the prime factor that “converted the future from an enemy into an opportunity” and led the “human passion for games and wagering into economic growth, improved quality of life and technological progress.” Bernstein revels in the way that rational risk management has “propelled science and enterprise into the world of speed, power, instant communication and sophisticated finance.” Summing up, he argues that the giants who have led the way from “the perception of risk from chance of loss into opportunity for gain, from FATE and ORIGINAL DESIGN to sophisticated probability-based forecasts of the future, and from helplessness to choice.”

It would be hard to find a more optimistic assessment of the fruits of risk management and its prospects for the future.

With such unbounded optimism, it is strange that the cover of the book shows Rembrandt’s Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee.[1] The image Rembrandt painted is based on the story in the Gospel of Mark where Christ intervenes and prevents the floundering vessel from crashing into the rocks. Are we to take from this that risk management is something like one of Christ’s miracles? Or, is risk management in some way to be considered from a religious perspective? Bernstein is silent on this and Christ was removed from the painting’s title in the description of the cover. Religion and faith are not considered in the text. This is because in Bernstein’s view as far as risk in relation to the future is concerned, mathematics has prevailed against superstition, against fortune telling and prophecy, and as the title suggests, against the gods themselves. The emphasis throughout is on the rational use of risk analysis. What could go wrong? Why then this religious image to be the cover of the book? [PM1] As I will argue further on, risk is always about the unknown future and the unknown future always animates the psyche in deep ways that are ignored when wearing the blinders of rationality that risk management has become.

In the 1990s, many institutions hired CROs (Chief Risk Officers), paid them handsomely, and raised their status. The idea was to reduce the risk of insolvency. Recent research shows that risky behavior on the part of financial institutions increased instead,[2] and led to the largest financial crash since the Great Depression. The reasons for this “failure” are hidden behind layers of secrecy. What the evidence points to however is that the presumed objective rationality of risk control and management will always be outweighed by emotional factors of self-interest, greed and fear at the highest levels.

I find it fascinating that Bernstein fails to mention emotion, fear or greed. Nor does he mention addiction or power or psychology. In other words, in the book that is as close to a Bible of Risk as one can get, there is no mention of the factors that drive human behavior when facing risk in the real world. This is something like pointing to the facts of arithmetic as to why it’s always rational to have a balanced checkbook. True, but hardly the determiner that it is always pictured to be.

Paradoxically, it appears that the use of risk management is impervious to the consequences of not actually following risk management rules. This is why Bernstein’s optimism about the future as the unfolding of unending bounty is wrong. It does not account for how humans behave in the real world. How else to explain not only the human contribution to climate change, but to the denial of climate change as well. It does not appear that the glories of risk management are going to save humans from their own suicidal processes of poisoning the planet, extinguishing vast arrays of living plants and animals, and staring their own extinction in the face. Ubiquitous and fatal risks have not been managed. They have been ignored.

The dark reality of the “progress” made possible by risk management is that the risk to human survival has never been greater.

The word risk, in its earliest spelling as risque, came into English in 1661 in this sentence: Risque, peril, jeopardy, danger, hazard, chance. The word comes from the French in the form of risqué, and from the Italian in the form of risicare. The sense of “impropriety” is clear in the French origin, while the sense of “to dare” is from the Italian. Bernstein sites only the Italian sense of “dare” as a stance that overcomes the “fates.” He ignores the origin that carries the sense of perhaps doing something “wrong.” Looking further back, we find the Latin word resecare, which was used to refer to the danger of ships being “cut” by unseen rocks beneath the surface. This is the scene that is pictured on the cover of Bernstein’s book. This word more clearly conveys the Indo-European root, sek I, which means “cut.” It is also the origin of our words sect, intersect, insect, and sex.

Suppose we ask the question of how risk management is to be applied to sects? To intersections? To insects? To sex? Here you can see that mathematical management via elaborated theories of probability, are not going to leap to mind. This is where the qualitative nature of risk is essential. Qualitative risk management is a well-known practice that is considered necessary prior to quantitative risk management. One develops a “registry of risks,” which is an attempt to anticipate everything of consequence that “could go wrong.” Even if such a registry of risks is developed, what happens in a typical scenario is that most such risks are discounted and risks remain that “qualify” for quantitative approaches are left to consider. This is what happens in all financial institutions when they discount all most all qualitative risks and focus in vary narrow ways on risks amenable to certain favored financial models. This is why such ventures will always lead to collapse.

Now we are in a situation where known risks are not just discounted but are denied altogether. You can just feel the ship floundering and edging closer and closer to the rocks that will cut the vessel and lead to its demise. This is why Melville’s Moby Dick is such a masterpiece of prophecy relevant to our current condition.

The theory of probability began its long ascent to the top of Mt. Rational in 1654, and provides the confidence that managing all risks is now possible. The word risk was introduced into English seven years later, in 1661. When I read prescriptions for risk management, I can’t help but be aware of that sentence: Risque, peril, jeopardy, danger, hazard, chance. This seems a more accurate picture of what we face and what we have failed to manage. Instead of focusing on how to manage the risks we face, it is far more urgent to ask ourselves why do we ignore our perils, why do we knowingly increase the jeopardy we are placing ourselves in, why do we ignore the dangers that we are seeing developing at exponential rates, why are we increasing the hazards to our very existence, why are we allowing ourselves almost no chance of a future. These are the qualitative areas we should be exploring front and center in our personal lives, our cultural lives and our global lives. There are no more important questions.

As I said earlier, risk and its presumed management are always about the unknown future. The unknown future will always excite the psyche at its deepest levels. One of the ways of attending to the deep psyche’s process, is to take up a deep recognition of the values of dreams. I have argued elsewhere that dreams are always about the future. It follows then, that when dreams are ignored, we are ignoring one of our richest resources in relating to the future—whatever the nature of that future will be. Like so many realities that get ignored that will bring us greater harm, we must realize, at some point, that ignoring our dreams may be the costliest mistake of all.

[1] This painting and twelve other paintings, 13 in all, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, on March 18, 1990. It is the largest art theft in US history and remains unsolved. Bernstein does not mention this event. 

[2] Kim Pernell, Jiwook Jung, Frank Dobbin. The Hazards of Expert Control: Chief Risk Offices and Risky Derivatives. American Sociological Review, 2017; 82(3). 511. 

As I hunker down and shelter in place, I am set to reflecting on this crisis caused by a new Corona Virus and producing the disease known as COVID-19. The virus will kill hundreds of thousands or more before it is done and before, according to the latest research, it comes again, perhaps annually. In my reflecting I take in the economic devastation that has followed in the path of this virus and the suffering it is bringing to the lives of so many. Whether it infects or not, it is touching most everyone to some degree.

            I hear the idea that we humans are at war with the virus. I hear clamoring that we will win! We always do! Politicians love the war metaphor. It is meant to mobilize resources against the common enemy and to recruit the winning spirit. Hope is energized.

But the metaphor of war, like war itself, enables consolidation of power, further extraction of wealth from the many to the few, while deepening the reach of scrutiny, security, and secrecy.  War is beneficial to the powerful whether as metaphor or as combat.

I don’t resonate with the war metaphor. For me, nature, even at its most difficult from a human perspective, is always a teacher.  If we don’t see this, then we miss the lesson. Simple as that.  Corona Virus is nature doing its thing. What lesson might we learn if we see the virus as teacher? As I write this, I see the Pope say that the pandemic is one of nature’s responses to humans ignoring the climate crisis. This is a good example of a different perspective than “war.”

At the same time, President Trump tweets, “Once we OPEN UP OUR GREAT COUNTRY, and it will be sooner rather than later, the horror of the Invisible Enemy, except for those that sadly lost a family member or friend, must be quickly forgotten. Our Economy will BOOM, perhaps like never before!!!”

As you can see, the hegemony of human exceptionalism turns a deaf ear to nature except to exert human power and engage in unlimited extraction of resources. This is the operation of unbounded greed that has created the conditions leading to the climate crisis, decimating environments, extinguishing untold number of species, diminishing biodiversity, melting the glaciers, raising the oceans, and all such devastation. The unforeseen consequences created are what we are beginning to experience: unpredictable catastrophes, exponential changes that will lead to uninhabitable conditions and likely, very likely, the extinction of the human species.

The Pope says the pandemic gives us time to pause, to lower production, to lessen greed and to find ways to return to being part of nature. Good words. Falling on deaf ears.

The powers that be call for a rapid return to “normal.” This normal is precisely the problem that has so damaged our own nest that humanity’s collective suicide is all but assured. All for the short-term benefit of the few and long-term disaster for the many.

The Corona Virus Crisis is at present saturating attention as the collective event takes over in ever greater degree the center and periphery of most everyone’s attention. This is a natural process and the more so if the “event” is threatening. You probably feel the preoccupation verging on obsession. This too is natural. It is obvious that this crisis is foregrounded forcing other crises into the background—even those that are more threatening.

While the Corona Virus crisis is front and center in most everyone’s conscious experience, the crises we refer to as “climate change,” continue and deepen and become more severe and more threatening. But at present the climate change crises receive scant collective attention.

In addition to the Corona Virus crisis itself, there is of course the “fall out” from the crisis in the form of economic losses, extreme unemployment and collapse in many markets. Governments everywhere are taking unprecedented measures to shore up economies, to rescue collapsing markets, and in doing so generating degrees of debt beyond comprehension. The magnitude of this debt is such that it cannot be repaid and will be causing its own crises further down the road.

Trump councils forgetting about the horror of the invisible enemy even before we discern the full impact of the virus. This head-in-the-sand, feel good idea is wrong headed and dangerous.

What I am seeing in dreams is that the virus is a call to attention, to deep observation and reflection on what we humans have done to ourselves, and to begin preparing not for the next big boom, but for even greater horror.

"Civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not their poets."

Belief overwhelms all, not just belief in God or any other

divinity--divine or human--but everything becomes mere opinion

while mere opinion becomes belief and belief supplants knowing

and unknowing turns its back on knowledge.

No way to test belief, nor any desire to.

Belief marries power and the offspring's smile

sends chills among those who can see what's coming:

the Inquisition reborn, Torquemada lives again!

"Present bias" is thought to be "hard-wired" in the human brain. This was largely developed as an evolutionary necessity. It takes both cognitive and emotional forms. The "future" plays little role in present bias. Thus, present profit outweighs consideration of what longer-term harm may ensue from activities that produce present profit. Present political necessity far outweighs any consideration of the future. "Personal bias" likewise over weights personal gain in relation to gain for the many. The contemporary world has seen these processes escalate to degrees never before witnessed and unless changed, will continue to amass fortune and power only for a very few at the expense of the many. This is the natural outcome of what Bernays understood and projected. The major problem is that little if any of the immense global wealth and political power is being directed toward the catastrophic changes in global environments. Present bias keeps most everyone focused on the here and now, the seeming crucial news of the day, current elections, entertainments, and new gadgets. It is hard to look square into the face of what we have done to ourselves and to other life forms. Not only is denial a problem, but it is also not clear whether, in fact, anything can be done to change what is now in progress.  Again, only an enantiodromia of major degree will change the course of how we relate to this process.  

A must listen...

The response to the first phase of any collapse (whether in markets or anything else) is always an attempt to do whatever it takes to return to "normalcy." For the powers that be in capitalism's corporatocracy, this is essential. Hence, we see the drums being beaten by the Secretary of the treasury: Mnuchin predicted the economy will roar back with a"gigantic" fourth quarter, saying "we are going to kill this virus" and return to a "normal world." All these efforts (bailing out businesses, checks to consumers, Fed's expansion of multiple credit facilities and pouring trillions into the markets) are likely to fail. The markets will indeed rise on these "hopes," but hopes are for the headlines, not for the factors that drive the markets. All these efforts are counter to the"corrective spirit “of genuinely free markets. The markets are not free under the conditions we see at present. Genuine corrective factors are not allowed to work. If they were, such as was the case in the Great Depression, then would follow, not a return to "normal,” but to a deeply different way of doing things. Hence the many new programs of the "New Deal" introduced by President Roosevelt. Only a few of his proposed programs were enacted and survived legal challenges. Social Security was one. The corporatocracy is relentless and never let’s equitable conditions become normal. Hence, the increasing degree of inequality. This hubris invites correction. We will likely be seeing more and more of Nemesis and her retributions for hubris.

Humans have always been good at extinguishing one another whether accidentally or intentionally. The general extent and efficiency of this process has increased over time and the range of objects (other life forms) of this process have increased as well. Now included in this process is the potential extinction of humanity itself, a kind of self-inflicted process of destroying our nest. Our efforts have led to positive feedback loops which are irreversible in ever increasing number. We are destroying our own habitat and the habitat of many non-human life forms at an accelerating pace. The political and financial will in the face of denial is weakening. Aside from slogans, pink-cloud optimism, and passive hope, little is being accomplished in reality to "do" anything about the unrelenting destructive processes humans have set in motion. What is in progress, undergirded and nourished by the greed dynamics of money, can at this point be "changed" only by an enantiadormia of major degree. There is increasing potential for financial, political and cultural collapse. Only something on this level would have the capacity to curb and transform the hubris of the present conditions.

Paco and I would like to suggest that readers of Dreams, Bones & the Future: Queries & Speculations (Vol 2) re-read the last 38 pages of text beginning with Q& S Twenty-Nine "The Triage of Risk in a Risky World" (p. 140). We feel this may provide a much-needed perspective as our everyday lives become impacted by the CVID-19 pandemic, the economic fallout, collective fear and panic, and unseen and unknown consequences that will unfold.

Here is a taste:

"The unknown future will always excite the psyche at its deepest levels. One of the ways of attending to the deep psyche’s process is to take up a deep recognition of the values of dreams. I have argued elsewhere that dreams are always about the future. It follows then, that when dreams are ignored, we are ignoring one of our richest resources in relating to the future—whatever the nature of that future will be. Like so many realities that get ignored that will bring us greater harm, we must realize, at some point, that ignoring our dreams may be the costliest mistake of all." (p. 147)

Now more than ever...with Grandpa Eliott, Clarence Bekker, and the original Playing for Change performers...still my favorite version that launched a movement.

Here is the link:

Pass it on....