MANY years ago, clients of the Royal Bank of Canada used to receive “Royal Bank Letters” which covered a wide variety of personal and global issues. One of the more memorable and compelling articles was entitled, “The Elements of Folly” which examined how folly is committed and how it can be avoided.
The authors regard folly as an elusive concept. To them, there’s a difference between folly and simple foolishness. Anyone can act foolishly sometimes; however, folly involves repeated acts of tomfoolery. Its primary dictionary definition as a “foolish belief or act” covers minor follies that occur daily. Secondary definitions, such as “a useless and senseless undertaking” or “an action that ends or can end in disaster,” come closer to the way folly is used by historians and philosophers.
However, the authors do not feel these definitions fully capture the essence of folly. They attribute this shortcoming to a certain mystery about folly, in that it tends to be repeated in the face of compelling evidence that certain decisions and/or actions will reap dire consequences. A similar mystery surrounds criminals who repeatedly commit crimes knowing that if they’re caught, a prison term will result.
The authors draw examples in history and literature to support their claim about the irresistibility of folly. They cite the familiar story of the Greek’s conquest of Troy. The Trojans were strongly warned that soldiers were hidden inside the wooden horse gifted to them by the Greeks. Yet, they did exactly what they were warned not to do when they hauled it within their city walls. The folly of the British in the 1700s in losing their American colonies was repeated by the Americans in the 1960s and 1970s when they lost the Vietnam War. Arguably, the most egregious folly related to the infamous invasion of Iraq by the USA and its allies. They dismissed the pleas of UN Weapons Inspectors for more time to do a more thorough search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). They insisted that by bombing the Iraqis into submission–using their own high-priced, hi-tech, WMDs–they would take over the country and find the WMDs much faster than the UN could. As is well known, after a military campaign that cost billions of dollars and claimed the lives of thousands of innocent Iraqis, no WMDs were found. We later learned that the WMD tale was a “red herring” all along.
These examples support Barbara W. Tuchman’s contention in her 1984 best seller “The March of Folly,” that social and technological progress does not alter the workings of folly. She argued that the architects of folly over the years committed the following errors: (1) they embraced fixed notions and could not be budged from them; (2) they tried to triumph over others by force rather than finesse; (3) they placed exaggerated importance on not showing weakness; (4) they ignored evidence that events were not proceeding as they had predicted; they misinterpreted facts to suit their own biases; (5) they refused to listen to contrary opinions; and they ceased to weigh possible gains against losses.
Tuchman highlighted other causes of folly, such as constant overreaction, exaggeration of the danger of not following the chosen course of action, and invention of excuses to persist in it. She concluded that “people bent on folly are overpowered by ambition, anxiety, status-seeking and face-saving”.
The RBC article admonishes us that it would be folly to place all the blame for folly at the feet of those in power and/or those holding positions of authority. She notes that because most of the time folly is committed in quest of what’s new, society seems to have lost its memory, which is “the mother of all wisdom.” Moreover, in pondering the future, many of us ignore the benefits of looking beyond the recent past, thus allowing folly to work its mischief, and deprive us of the ability to exert whatever influence we can on our leaders and public officials, to steer them clear of it.
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that CARICOM governments have committed folly by not using the priceless lessons from past, external, political, economic and health shocks to deal with current and future global crises, including those presented by the current administration in the USA. We ought to have been better prepared to deal with any policy-induced hardships that emerge in the short to medium term.
The article concludes by offering the following helpful tips to enable us to avert folly:
1. Don’t kid yourself. Always remember the old saying that there is one you can dupe more easily than yourself. Always seek the advice of people with experience and heed what they have to say.
2. Don’t indulge in wishful thinking. Often, folly begins with wishful thinking about other people’s reactions to the action we propose to take. Distinguish between your desires and your logic, remembering that desire has the upper hand, psychologically. In other words, be realistic.
3. Don’t throw good money after bad. There is a point to cut your losses. To find that point, consider whether the possible good you expect to do for yourself (or for the country- my emphasis) is greater or lesser than the possible bad.
4. Admit your mistakes. Many lives are lost, and much money is wasted because people refuse to change direction after their mistakes become clear to everybody but themselves. This resistance to admitting errors, partially explains why folly is repeated so persistently.
5. Face the facts. Folly-prone people have the habit of twisting facts around to justify what they want to do.
6. Don’t go into denial. Since denial is self-generated, it cannot be guarded against by the interested party. It’s best to talk things over with an experienced person who can think and speak objectively.
7. Don’t get carried away. It never does any harm to question what everybody is thinking, saying or doing. Practice what Descartes termed “methodic doubt”.
I commend these helpful tips to you.