Don't Do Evil

The technological developments of the last 15 years have been both exciting and revolutionary and have simultaneously exposed a revealing trait of human behaviour. Companies who lead the way, such as Google, Amazon, Uber and Facebook etc. consider themselves not only pioneers of innovation but also of ethics, with Google going so far as to declare - Don't Do Evil - as their motto. Amazon's vision is also positive: Work Hard, Have Fun, Make History. Perhaps Facebook's motto 'Move Fast, Break Things’, is the most honest, but in general all these corporations want to give the impression of positively improving people's lives, and ‘changing the world for the better’.

That’s all fine. However, it has surfaced that many of these companies have proven to be less than ethical in both their working practices and attitude to the effects their changes are having on the world. Amazon have been heavily criticised in the UK for treating their employees badly. Facebook is currently up against heavy criticism (and not for the first time) regarding its unethical use of personal data, and Uber have had their licences revoked in some cities because of poor working practices. It increasingly seems that there is an impression radiating from this type of globalised business-maker that, ‘change is coming and F#@k anyone who is affected by it’.

There’s no point in taking the Luddite view, 'if change improves life, so be it’. However, these CEOs are all inadvertently saying, ‘The future is how we see it’. Should they then really be given a free pass to railroad in and shape the world according to how they see it, regardless of the human cost?

Facebook, for instance, recently introduced a service for children. Is this necessary? What is the point? To prepare them for a digital world? To help them make friends? No argument explains why they have done this other than it is the social media equivalent of the Happy Meal. It seems that the purpose of these companies/pioneers/individual CEOs is to change the world for the better; but whether it is a child exposed to social media content they don't have the emotional intelligence to understand or adults financially vulnerable to stringent working practices, these companies really don't appear to have the public's interests at heart. Instead, their purpose looks more like changing the world to suit their image of it.

Are the CEOs really evil-doers, wringing their hands (with a fluffy white cat perched on their lap), while plotting how to make the vulnerable increasingly suffer or do they genuinely not intend the unfortunate outcomes of their policies?

The answer lies in the dual nature of our thinking and the relationship between the two.

Our minds are made up of two systems of thinking. One we can see, and one we usually can't. We call these visible and invisible thinking. The visible, thoughts we can see, we use to orientate through life, to calculate a tip in a cafe, to read an email, to notice a nice perfume and ‘Oh s#'t! the bus is leaving’.

The invisible, the thoughts we don't normally see, are everything else. In particular, our past experiences, what we think about our past experiences and the wants or purposes we have developed because of our past experiences. And with this final point, it is these invisible purposes that are what we really want to achieve, despite what we say.

Invisible purposes?

Yes! Have you ever said something like, “I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop myself”?

Or, “I couldn’t help myself, I had to do it”. "I know it was wrong of me, but I found myself doing it anyway". So, if there are times when I couldn’t stop myself then we have an understanding that invisible thinking exists; that we do things not knowing why we’ve done them. They’ve been and stayed invisible purposes because we have hereto been either unable or unwilling to look at them.

So how is that we have these two 'I's with contradicting purposes? Shame is at the crux of this dichotomy.

We have all done things we are ashamed of, with many shameful (to us) memories having been with us since childhood; these were important events or circumstances we experienced that remain unfinished; that is, for whatever reason we were never able to think them through. And although we never reflected upon, or fully understood these experiences, this does not make them benign. Nope, instead, they make us fail (be it socially, financially, in our relationships etc.) as we constantly twist and contort our lives to avoid facing what happened. The frustration that comes from the resulting dysfunction in our lives, means we often create anti-social purposes like, wanting others to fail or wanting to feel powerful or important because, for example, we felt unloved as a child (a pervasive shameful thought). However, if we are to belong with others/society, these antisocial purposes will need to be kept hidden from others and usually covered up with 'good' visible purposes, whereby individuals show the world (what they see as) the exact opposite of what they really think – their invisible purposes.

The recent revelations about Oxfam relief workers in Haiti paying local women for sex is a good example of people having a 'charitable' visible purpose, one that they themselves believe they have. Whereas they invisibly developed that ‘good’ purpose to cover up (probably in this case) wanting others to fail.

Does that mean everyone who does or espouses altruistic work is fake and a con-artist?

No, absolutely not.

It's simply that actions speak louder than words.

Words are the visible and actions are the invisible.

Whatever your mission statement, it’s what you do in/for the world that reveals your real vision.

Law of Thinking No. 1

Visible and invisible ideas of happiness are contradictory within the totality of one mind.