If you spend your career in countries that have completely different cultures, you learn that the Western way of doing things isn’t the only way; and it isn’t always the best, either.
Take business education, for example. One reason I chose to study for my MBA in Singapore was the course in the Sunzi Bingfa (孫子兵法) for Strategy offered at Nanyang Business School. Run by Professor Wee Chow Hou it explored the use of Sun Zi’s ‘Art of War’ for management decisions. (An older way of rendering Sunzi – 孙子 – in English, ‘Sun Tzu’, may be more familiar to some readers).
Taking the text on its own, the commentary offers many deep and useful insights on how to achieve strategic goals. To really understand its profundity, though, the reader needs to be familiar with the broader worldview of traditional China, and specifically the Dao, or the Way. This teaches that the universe, and all things within it, have their own nature and natural way of behaviour; to recognise this and work with it allows one to succeed seemingly without effort. This is the principle expressed as a martial art in taijiquan (tai chi), and which made its way into Japan in aikido and judo.
Another classic text, less well–known in the West, is The 36 Strategies (三十六计). Again, as a stand-alone text it offers a collection of strategies which can be adapted and used according to the situation and, as such, is of use even to a western decision-maker.
To an educated Chinese audience, however, both texts resonate with cultural references. The more familiar one is with the classical literary texts of Chinese literature and philosophy, the deeper the understanding one can get from a brief turn of phrase or allusion: something that would not be evident to the casual reader.
The same is true of the classic Chinese tool of divination, the Yi Jing or I Ching. It may very well surprise a western reader to learn that in Asia, even today, managers and businessmen at all levels will use this ancient oracle to assist their decision-making. Some Asian business schools even teach their MBA students how to use it.
But wait, what? Isn’t this fortune-telling? Trying to predict the future? What’s that got to do with serious business?
Well, no, that’s not what it is. In western countries, we’ve forgotten what the function and purpose of divination really is. It doesn’t really see the future written down, as if it were some story that’s already fixed. It doesn’t tell us what’s going to happen, so that we can just follow the script. That’s just for circus sideshows and charlatans.
Effective use of the oracle works by randomly presenting the reader with a poetic text, full of images. Considering how this applies to the current situation stimulates an unconscious, creative interpretation of the facts as they are known, leading to deeper insights and understanding than might be obtained from a strictly logical analysis. The use of divination doesn’t replace logic, of course, but it provides a very valuable supplement.
At a basic level, the I Ching invites us to consider the principles of change. The interplay between what is clearly seen and what is hidden, known and not known. The flux between growth and decrease. The relationships between strengths and weaknesses.
At a deeper level, it takes us out of our current world – and out of the habits of thinking we’ve unconsciously become locked in. It’s a world of misty mountain paths; of foxes cautiously making their way across frozen rivers; of autumn lightning. It’s a glimpse into an older world closely connected to the great and impersonal forces of nature – and into the small, intimate lives of the animals that live around us.
All of these examples come from Chinese culture, which is the non-western civilisation that I’m most familiar with.
Of course, every culture has its own versions – including western cultures, even if we’ve forgotten how to respect them.
Perhaps it’s not surprising. As the British writer L.P. Hartley rightly said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
Before, and during, the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, most educated Europeans shared a mental toolset of symbols which dated back to antiquity. The Tarot cards, for example, use many pictorial images which are not intended to stand alone: they are intended to invoke symbolic meanings from many other texts and traditions; the reader is expected to know and understand what these are and what they mean.
As with the I Ching, interpreting the Tarot cards is a poetic analysis, not a literal one. It generates symbolic meaning and invites the reader to use that as a filter and framework for analysing their question, restructuring their factual knowledge to bypass the intellectual left brain to provoke right-brain insights.
We have a rich tradition of this here in my native Wales.
On September 16 1400, Owain Glyndŵr raised the standard of rebellion against the English king Henry IV and declared himself to be the true Prince of Wales. With him was his personal poet-seer, a man whose name has been lost to history. A few years later, with his rebellion in full swing, Glyndŵr called upon soldier-seer Hopcyn ap Thomas ab Einion for insights into the future.
These have been taken to show that Glyndŵr was superstitious, in thrall to medieval fears and ignorance. This is to completely misunderstand what was happening.
Hopcyn ap Thomas and men like him – and there were many – masters of Welsh poetry. Coming from an oral tradition, they would have memorised scores, perhaps hundreds, of traditional poems and tales. They would very likely have recited these to an audience many times, mastering the emotional power of the imagery.
Many of them would also have been experienced soldiers and commanders; it’s known for a fact that Glyndŵr’s seer and Hopcyn ap Thomas both were. These were men of the world, who had seen the best and the very worst that men can do. They would have been able to reflect upon an ancient poem and use it to seed a creative insight into current events in a way that would be quite recognisable to a contemporary Chinese using the I Ching.
In more recent times, the Coelbren Alphabet, devised by polymath genius Iolo Morganwg, also has uses for divination; something which is apparent in his works which were collected and published after his death by his disciple John Williams ab Ithel in Dosparth Edeyrn Davod Aur.
In short, the literature on modern business decision-making is rooted in a ‘modern’, analytical worldview which is actually rather limited and parochial. Its logical, data-driven approach is definitely necessary, of course.
The fact is, though, that other cultures around the world supplement this with methods which draw upon intuitive insights with a structured methodology. This approach allows the educated user to draw not only upon their own knowledge, but on the accumulated experiences of their culture. It’s worth recognising that western cultures also have their equivalents which were taken very seriously by decision-makers in the past – and that they were quite right to take them seriously.
Perhaps we should consider doing the same.
Photo by petr sidorov on Unsplash
Traethiad 