Crisis = Danger + Opportunists

There's been a lot of talk lately about "not wasting a crisis," that the financial disaster offers a chance to do big things and make great changes. The unspoken catalyst for all this change, of course, is fear--when people are scared they're more easily swayed. In such times, we are frequently reminded that the Chinese symbol for "crisis" consists of two characters, one denoting "danger" and the other "opportunity." The idea that a crisis is an opportunity has become a kind of reassuring proverb. It is also entirely false.

Victor H. Mair, the renowned professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania (his translation of Chuang Tzu, Wandering on the Way, is one of my favorite books), has written an enlightening essay explaining that "crisis" = "danger" + "opportunity" is a "potentially perilous, fundamentally fallacious theory."

Those who purvey the doctrine that the Chinese word for "crisis" is composed of elements meaning "danger" and "opportunity" are engaging in a type of muddled thinking that is a danger to society, for it lulls people into welcoming crises as unstable situations from which they can benefit. Adopting a feel-good attitude toward adversity may not be the most rational, realistic approach to its solution.

The Chinese logograph for "crisis" is wēijī, consisting of two characters:

wēi

jī

While the wēi character does indeed denote "danger," Professor Mair contends that the jī character most definitely does not denote "opportunity."

The jī of wēijī, in fact, means something like “incipient moment; crucial point (when something begins or changes).” Thus, a wēijī is indeed a genuine crisis, a dangerous moment, a time when things start to go awry. A wēijī indicates a perilous situation when one should be especially wary. It is not a juncture when one goes looking for advantages and benefits. In a crisis, one wants above all to save one's skin and neck! Any would-be guru who advocates opportunism in the face of crisis should be run out of town on a rail, for his/her advice will only compound the danger of the crisis.

It’s important to be clear in our words, especially in times of wēijī. As the great Taoist Chuang Tzu said, "When deeds and words are in accord, the whole world is transformed." But for those opportunists with utopian dreams, the master added this admonition:

If you persist in trying to attain what is never attained, you will be destroyed by the very thing you seek. To know when to stop, to know when you can get no further by your own action, this is the right beginning!

Two Sides of the American Coin

We hear that at the Davos economic summit world leaders were piling on the new game in town--blaming America for causing the global financial crisis. However just or unjust this may be, it's certainly understandable, especially with the American Bernard Madoff parading as the new poster boy for greed run amock.

At this lowly juncture, it may be worthwhile to point out that the flip side of America's 'excessive' greed is America's great generosity. Indeed, the worst thing about the Madoff scandal is the number of charities whose funds have been lost. As has often been noted, Americans lead the world in charitable giving:

In 2005, Americans gave $260.28 billion to scores of religious, environmental, and health organizations—$15 billion more than in 2004.

In 2006, Americans gave nearly $300 billion to charitable causes, setting a record and besting the 2005 total that had been boosted by a surge in aid to victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma and the Asian tsunami.

Warren Buffet pledged to donate $37 billion to charity.

About 65 percent of households with incomes lower than $100,000 give to charity.

The U.S. government gave about $20 billion in foreign aid in 2004, while Americans privately gave $24.2 billion.

Americans per capita individually give about three and a half times more money per year, than the French per capita. They also give seven times more than the Germans and 14 times more than the Italians.

Everyone understands the temptation of greed. What remains a great mystery is the impulse of human kindness. Here's a very elegant and beautiful statement on the nature of kindness--from, of all people, that renowned philosopher of economic selfishness, Adam Smith:

"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."

Collective Catharsis

When will we finally emerge from the financial fog of the economic crisis?

Infectious Greed has posted this marvelously metaphoric photo of the city of Vancouver trapped in a temperature inversion. It reminds me of the "cloud-wrapped shores of Hades" encountered by Odysseus on his voyage to the Underworld. We currently find ourselves in a similar foggy hell, a seemingly unnavigable darkness, where "an endless deathful night is spread over its melancholy people." (The Odyssey, T.E. Lawrence)

As I noted in the introduction to my novel Night of the Furies, the dark voyage of Homer's hero is known as the Nekyia, the 'night sea journey.' The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung saw the Nekyia symbolically as a journey into the unconcious--the source of the creative and instinctual forces of life.

Mythologically, the night sea journey motif usually involves being swallowed by a dragon or sea monster. It is also represented by
imprisonment or crucifixion, dismemberment or abduction, experiences traditionally weathered by sun-gods and heroes: Gilgamesh, Osiris, Christ, Dante, Odysseus, Aeneas. In the language of the mystics it is the dark night of the soul.

All the night sea journey myths derive from the perceived behavior of the sun, which, in Jung's lyrical image, "sails over the sea like an immortal god who every evening is immersed in the maternal waters and is born anew in the morning. ["Symbols of the Mother and of Rebirth,"CW 5, par. 306.] The sun going down, analogous to the loss of energy in a depression, is the necessary prelude to rebirth. Cleansed in the healing waters (the unconscious), the sun (ego-consciousness) lives again. (NYAAP)

Perhaps our current economic 'depression' is a societal version of this cyclical descent. The economy collapses, business undergoes a painful dismemberment, forcing us all to 'sacrifice'--a collective crucifixion--all as a necessary prelude to rebirth.

In a fascinating essay in The Spectator, Tom Stacey speculates that we need the occasional war or economic collapse:

I perceive something in the collective soul of man which from time to time secretly needs the catharsis of economic collapse or war, or even both of those grievous things. And I also perceive that, as that secret need grows in the soul, so is it ineluctably met.

...One way or another we get the cathartic catastrophe, the ruthless purge of the shallow motives and inducements we had grown habituated to responding to, and their replacement by certain profounder, more basic incentives: staying alive, fending for those we love, and maybe fighting and even dying for a cause or a country and the half-forgotten principles that define it.

Being forced to face the looming abyss leads to a kind of deepening, a profound reconnection with fundamental truths. Hell may be the very thing we needed all along.

Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld, Jan Breughel, 1598 (click HERE to enlarge)