The self-identity of the best depends on this. The problem with being 'the best' is that the criterion for being best has to be set by someone with authority. It is this same disorder that my three acquaintances seem to fear most. She was afraid, she says, of the disorder that would have ensued: prisoners running amok without the proper supervision to get them back in marching line. Schlink's war-trial defendant, Hanna, did not unlock the doors of the church to let the prisoners out, not because she is evil or because she was following orders. Of course CPE is not merely a corporate problem it is a societal problem. The identity and the obligations of 'being the best' is a very powerful lock indeed, without any obvious key. Escaping that world is no easier than escaping the totalitarian society of Nazi Germany. In my experience, CPE, not compensation, or excitement, or 'perks', is the motive force of not just Wall Street but of the entire global corporate world. Standards of excellence, after all, do not maintain themselves. It also justifies the treatment of subordinates as corporate fodder, hiring and firing with panache, and insisting on single-minded loyalty as one moves up the ranks. As she discovered in her employment in an investment bank, the culture of professional firms like Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Company is grounded in a simple, direct message: "You are here (or want to be here in the case of applicants) because you are the best and want to be among the best." Call it the Culture of Presumptive Excellence (CPE) for short.ĬPE is what stimulates people to work consistently impossible hours, in places distant from home, with no respite. Her ethnographic study of the life and culture of Wall Street, Liquidated, is as insightful as it is troublesome to anyone who asks themselves why indeed they have not simply unlocked the door to an alternative life. It also reminded me of the remarkable book by Karen Ho, a social researcher from Princeton. This psychic driver of "being the best you can" struck loud bells in my own experience. But upon pushing a bit harder, it was also clear that the common strand among them was that each believed he had somehow let himself down by not realising the full potential he believed he had in him. Success is naturally a social matter defined for us by those we know well. This was associated with a fear of the disappointment or disapproval by their friends and family. Financial compensation had become just that - compensation for the companionship of marriage and family that had been denied. Guilt in not providing what their families needed was important. The reasons given for not stopping were almost identical in all three cases: "I can't afford to." The financial denotation of 'afford', however, wasn't the main point. All of them, it shouldn't be necessary to emphasise, 'volunteered' for the careers and styles of living they now suffer from.Ī central question posed to The Reader's defendant in her trial for causing the death of Jewish prisoners trapped in a burning church is, "Why didn't you unlock the door?" I posed essentially the same question to my three acquaintances: "The situation you now find yourself in did not occur overnight." I gently suggested, "Therefore as you perceived what was happening to your mind, to your family, to the quality of your life, to national culture, why didn't you stop?" In principle, stopping is even less difficult than unlocking a door. The last is disgusted with the complete indifference of both his colleagues and clients to the visible harm their firms are inflicting on the world. Another has been made redundant and, despite a large payout, sees nothing but existential gloom for the rest of his days. One has had a psychological breakdown and is now institutionalised. Their marriages, they all feel, are on the edge of breakdown. All three are, however, deeply dissatisfied with their lives. To be more personal and concrete: At the moment I have three acquaintances, each of whom has had a reasonably successful corporate career - one as an investment manager in the City, the second as a senior executive of an international sporting organisation, and the third as a partner of a global accounting firm. And, like the SS guards at a Nazi death camp, we are unaware of the moral peril of our situation, and unwilling to remove ourselves from that situation even when its harmful effects are obvious. We are all inevitably involved in this larger problem. But it is, I think, also relevant more generally to the way in which human beings get ensnared incrementally into the evils of their society. The Reader is a profound exposition of the 'second generation' issues concerning moral guilt for the Holocaust.
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