Appearances and packaging are important, even if sometimes deceiving

CorporateNature metaphor series, No 128

STORY 1: David Ogilvy & the beggar

A 1950s story tells the vivid history of advertising guru David Ogilvy. Ogilvy was working as a copywriter and would pass by a blind beggar on a street corner every day. The beggar held a sign: "I'M BLIND. PLEASE HELP." Pedestrians would usually walk past, ignoring the beggar. One day, the copywriter decided to help the man. He took out a marker and scribbled something on the sign. From that day on, the blind man's luck turned and his cup was always full of coins. The copywriter had changed the sign to: "IT'S SPRING AND I'M BLIND. PLEASE HELP"

STORY 2: Seven Up & the Lemon flavour of yellow

Malcolm Gladwell tells this soft drinks story in his bestseller "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking." Fooling the brain with external visual stimulus is remarkably easy. It turns out that with the addition of only 15% more yellow colouring to the package of 7 Up, consumers consistently report a stronger lemon flavour. Similarly, the colour jelly taste test reveals just how essential appearances are for our brain to make a judgement call on whether something would taste good or not.

STORY 3: Kintsugi brings into the open what is often hidden.

Kinsukuroi (金繕い,  "kintsugi" or "golden repair) is the medieval Japanese technique of repairing broken pottery by gluing together broken fragments with a gold-mix paste. The idea is that the cracks where the item was broken are part of its history and should be showcased, rather than trying to hide them as defects. Collectors during some periods became so enamoured of this popular art form that some would even go as far as deliberately smashing valuable pottery so it could be repaired with the gold seams of kinsukuroi.

STORY 4: Zhuangzi parable about the monkey trainer

Chinese daoist philosopher Zhuangzi tells the story of a monkey trainer who was giving his monkeys acorns during training: three in the morning and four at night. This was considered unjust by some of the monkeys, and they got furious with their trainer. To alleviate the situation, the trainer suggested: "Why don't I switch this around: four nuts in the morning and three at night." The monkeys were all delighted.

5. CONCLUSION

Whether it's about a quick edit on the go, changing the taste of food by changing colour, turning a seeming flaw into a decorative feature, or using rhetoric to get your point across, the importance of external appearance is ever-present and of extreme importance. Consider this next time you go for a job interview.

Kintsugi: golden repair of a broken plate corner
(image source: Wikipedia)

All illusions are unreal but some are useful

Three stories approach illusion from different perspectives: money, religion & technology.
All illusions are unreal, but some are useful.

CorporateNature metaphor series, No 127

STORY 1: SOUND OF MONEY PAYS FOR SMELL OF SOUP
A beggar once sneaked into the kitchen of an inn and held a piece of bread over a pot of soup, hoping that the vapour of the soup would give flavour to his bread. The innkeeper caught him, accused him of stealing and demanded that the man pay for a soup. As the beggar had no money, he was brought to the local judge, Nasreddin Hodja. After hearing the story, Nasreddin Hodja decided to pay the innkeeper himself ... with merely the sound of throwing several coins on the table. It seemed like a fair deal: the sound of money paid for the smell of soup, one illusion for another.  

STORY 2: HOW A BUDDHIST SEES THE MOON

According to Buddhism, reality (dharma) exists but the unenlightened individual can only see it as an illusion. To practice mindfulness is to catch a fleeting glimpse of what is behind the veil of this illusion - the essence of reality. Buddha uses an apt analogy to explain this concept. Imagine the Moon (reality itself) and a reflection of it in a shallow puddle (our attempts to look at reality as it is). While the Moon is always in the sky, its reflection in the puddle remains only until the water evaporates. 

STORY 3: IS LIFE A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom goes even further than the Buddhists. He proposes that reality itself could be an artificial computer simulation. Bostrom argues that computing power in the future will be much greater than what it is today, and that future generations may use this power to run detailed simulations of reality. Given enough computing power and an adequate scientific understanding of "consciousness", it is possible that these simulated realities could include conscious beings. Thus, Bostrom surmises, if any sophisticated civilisation is able to and decides to run such a simulation, our own reality is quite likely a computer simulation itself, created by someone else. 

CONCLUSION

Each of us faces illusions on a daily bases: from dreams at night, to the computer in the office, to a movie in the cinema. To paraphrase the famous statistician George Box: all illusions are unreal, but some are useful. Is looking at the Moon in a puddle one of the useful ones?

Virtual reality headset
(image source: Wikipedia)

Opportune moments come few and far between. Cicadas wait 17 years for one

Three stories about revenge, insects and fires tackle the principle of "bide your time" and wait for the opportunity
CorporateNature metaphor series, No 126

STORY 1: ROYAL REVENGE IN ANCIENT CHINA
The Chinese idiom 卧薪尝胆 (wò xīn cháng dǎn) - literally "to sleep on firewood and taste gallbladder" - today means "to undergo self-imposed hardship to strengthen one's resolve for revenge". The story behind this idiom takes place in China's Warring States period. Towards the end of the 5th century B.C., the king of Wu attacked the state of Yue and took king Gou Jian of Yue as his prisoner. Gou Jian spent the next three years as personal servant to the king of Wu. During this time, he diligently followed every order of the king of Wu. He maintained the memory of his humiliation by subjecting himself to the harsh experience of sleeping on firewood spread across the floor and regularly eating gallbladder. By doing this, he "burned the bridges" towards forgiveness and didn't let go of his desire for vengeance. When Gou Jian eventually returned to Yue, he raised an army and conquered Wu.

STORY 2: THE 17-YEAR LIFE CYCLE OF CICADAS
The North American periodical cicada (Magicicada) is an insect with an extraordinary life cycle. For 13 or 17 years the larvae of these creatures lie dormant underground in the root of trees, drinking sap and waiting for the opportune moment to begin their adult life. Their life cycle is exactly 13 or 17 years (for different species) to allow all insects to emerge synchronised at the same time. The prime number of years appears to be an evolutionary adaptation against predators, who are unlikely to be able to synchronise their life cycles over such a long period. "If a brood were to emerge in cycles divisible by a smaller number, then local predators could reap rewards by synchronising their own shorter cycles and emerge in large numbers exactly when the cicadas appear. The large prime number of years saves the cicadas' skin (or rather shell).

STORY 3: ARCTIC FIRES CAN HIBERNATE
When you think of recent natural disasters, the fires in California or Australia spring to mind. But did you know that there are fires in the Arctic and they can smoulder under the snow for a year, keeping burning throughout the harsh Arctic winter. These "zombie fires" find oxygen-rich underground pockets in the peat layer where they can hibernate during the winter and reactivate when the weather allows. Some of the Siberian wildfires of 2019 have been hibernating underground and are coming to the surface again only now when the summer weather is offering a good opportunity.

CONCLUSION
When faced with a monumental task, the principle of "bide your time" is a good bet. Instead of diving in at the first instance, often it is better to withdraw and wait for the opportune moment... for 17 years if need be, if you are a cicada.

Mars rover "Opportunity"
(image source: Wikipedia)

Action Substitution: China's Trojan Horse were Five Stone Cows

CorporateNature Metaphor Series No 125

What do stone cow statues, Tom Sawyer, and viruses have in common? 

STORY 1: THE TROJAN HORSE OF ANCIENT CHINA - THE STORY OF THE "STONE CATTLE ROAD" (石牛道)
During the Warring States period of Ancient China, King Huiwen of Qin wished to conquer the state of Shu to the south, over the Qinling Mountains, and devised a cunning plan. He had his sculptors fashion five life-sized stone cows with gold hindquarters and offered them as a present to the king of Shu, on condition that Shu had to build a stone road for the cows to be delivered. The king of Shu built the stone road and Qin used the road to conquer Shu in 316 BC.

STORY 2: TOM SAWYER'S POWERS OF PERSUASION
In one of the most iconic stories in American literature, Mark Twain explains the art of persuasion using his characteristic sense of humour. Twain's character Tom Sawyer is made to whitewash his aunt's fence as punishment. Using a clever reverse psychology ploy, Tom manages to convince the neighbourhood boys that whitewashing a fence is not tedious work but an enjoyable pastime. In the end, all the boys start paying Tom to be allowed to paint the fence. As Mark Twain himself put it: "He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain."

STORY 3: WHY A NON-LIVING VIRUS HIJACKS YOUR BODY
A story closer to the current time and the Covid-19 pandemic involves the mechanism through which viruses propagate and spread. The general consensus nowadays is that viruses exist in a "grey area" between the living and the non-living. A virus cannot survive in the open nor replicate on its own. It instead hijacks a living host's system to produce more copies of itself. While it is "non-living", it interacts with the host in a way that resembles the survival instincts of a living organism.

4. CONCLUSION

Whether the goal is to conquer a state, paint a fence, or hijack a host organism, the mechanics  are similar and the principle is straightforward: if you can get someone else to invest time and energy to fulfil your objective, why not do it? This is the principle of action substitution.

"You scratch my back..." Keep scratching! End of story!

Tom Sawyer painting the fence
(images source: Wikipedia)

Capitalists are fruit pickers: they only take a cut. Communists and pig farmers take it all

Capitalism resembles picking fruit. Communism resembles slaughtering animals.
CorporateNature Metaphor Series No 124

1. FRUIT TREES & CAPITALISM 
We plant trees and crops in expectation of a return on investment. When we pick the fruit of a tree, we are taxing the tree a percentage of its accumulated carbon and sugar, year after year. Yet, the tree preserves whatever growth does not come in the shape of fruit. This resembles the capitalist system where different people takes a cut at various levels but there is still an incentive for the tree to keep producing.

2. LIVESTOCK & COMMUNISM
When we slaughter farm animals, this is extreme taxation: we impose a 100% tax on the growth of the animal and take everything that the animal has accumulated, including the animal's life. This resembles the communist system where all surplus is expropriated by the state. No wonder that communist regimes collapse as people have no incentive to either produce or not to waste resources.

3. COMPARISON
Ironically, a vegetarian diet of eating fruit is capitalist, while eating meat is communist. Capitalists seem to be good at "milking" the goose that lays the golden eggs, while communists go for the jugular and bring both the goose and the golden eggs to an abrupt end (while promising a bright future).

Livestock
(image source: Wikipedia)

Writing a book is like breaking lake ice with a hammer

To succeed: Strike the ice with a hammer in one place; and write in one voice on a single topic.

CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 123

Writing a book is a long-term commitment to a daunting project: it requires continuous effort in the same direction. In nature, this process resembles breaking lake ice in the winter to create a fishing hole. Here are the key similarities: 

1. Book-writing and ice-breaking require multiple blows

Every book begins with an idea in the author’s mind. The aim of the author is to formulate this idea clearly and build an argument around it that is convincing enough to “hammer” the key points home. A compelling argument evolves over the space of multiple chapters where each consecutive chapter builds on the previous one, going deeper into the subject matter. Metaphorically speaking, each chapter represents a hammer blow on the surface of the frozen lake. With each blow, the ice gets weaker and the end goal of breaking it draws nearer.

2. Striking in a focal point works better than scraping and thinning a wider area

When writing, it is essential to have the core idea firmly fixed in your mind in order to keep each chapter focused on the topic. While different chapters view the topic from different angles, they are all directed towards the same end. Getting distracted by chasing multiple topics will not get you space on the shelves of the bookstores. Similarly, breaking the surface of a frozen lake requires blows in the same spot. After all, you won’t make a hole in the ice by scraping and thinning a wide area of the ice sheet with a knife.

3. Editing is gnawing

Editing is a crucial aspect of successful writing. The editing process is gruelling work because it requires making tough choices. In nature, Arctic seals in the winter need to maintain the holes in the ice sheet to be able to come out on the surface to breathe. They do this by constantly gnawing ice off the edges of the hole to keep it from freezing over. Similarly, editing requires constant gnawing, milling and perfecting of the text and ultimately of the ideas. 

And when you eventually succeed in digging a hole in the ice, be careful not to drop the hammer in the lake. You may need it for digging another hole, i.e. writing another book.

Ice on Lake Baikal in winter
(image source: Wikipedia)