So a thought crossed my mind, of well-dressed men with violent hearts.

Strangely, it happened as I wandered through Regents Park. Perhaps it was the glance to the right through the trees to the security personnel standing outside one of the park’s beautiful regency residences – a member of ‘staff’ with a distinctly eastern bloc special-forces tilt to their gait, posture and physical presence.

Even weirder, the trigger was not the mallet-like, box-thumb hands that could squeeze the life out of me in a heartbeat (a stalled one that is); or his potential tightly-wound, to unleash unholy and highly trained hell armed or otherwise on any kind or number of assailants.

It was not even a sudden turbulent curiosity cloaked in too many spie films about special ops backstories; or on what continent or continents his personal attritional signature might have been developed.

It was actually the cut of his suit.

Yes, amidst the wealth of possibilities for curiosity to be pricked, it was the sartorial that leapt to the top of the pile for me.

The reason it did so was held in the fact that there was the shadow of something terrible about him. But it was not held in his potential for murderous activity or at the very least, its highly painful and vaguely psychopathic cousin, maiming.

I realised that the most disturbing thing about him was the shadow of death that was cast across him – and not that of anyone else’s. It was the shadow of his own.

The suit was the signature of his own demise. His whole sartorial self, was stained with a destiny more aligned with the dusty bottom of a builder’s skip behind some grand hotel In Budapest, than it was the baize surface of a blackjack table in the Sporting Club in Mote Carlo.

Now, to be clear, the look I am describing is not to be mistaken for just plain bad, really cheap or misguidedly chosen clothing and everyday wear.

This also should not be seen to stumble into the wardrobe of the ill-fitting porter’s uniform, the one size too big overcoat of the hotel doorman (with give away chasm between the back of the coat collar and shirt collar). And this absolutely should not under any circumstance be mistaken for the shambling borrowed suit look, quite popular at weddings and court appearances (thought the latter might come the closest). 

The suit was dark blue – almost black. But the vents were a little too over stated; the lapels a little too obvious. It was slightly ill fitting. His shoes were exceptionally well polished.

There was nothing of the stealth-wealth class enshrined in the uber-discretion of Commander Bond’s suit, personally cut by Gieves, an open stitched silk shirt, shod in a well turned pair of Lobbs, a understated pochette off-setting the breast pocket.

The benefit of the minutiae of class correctness and breeding and having been around money and its vestiges all one’s life, means that invariably smart clothes are worn comfortably, a cloth skin which the wearer is happy in, regardless of whether they are loose or tight, cheaply accessorised or expensively purchased.

(Though to be frank some might think otherwise having spent an afternoon in the company of the finer, older end of the British aristocracy: where one could be forgiven for thinking that the ladies from the tills at Sainsbury’s had popped on a frock and picked up the male vagrants from the local AA meeting on the way round to the Manor House.)

Having spied this man, and as my mind wandered through a picture album of gangsterdom and thuggery I realised that it was the same reoccurring theme.

Everyone looks like they’re dressed in their funeral suit.

To be fair these types of men are built for attrition. Built to haul, bludgeon, rip, cut, break and prevail – whether that is with a sharp plough across a barren field, with a sledgehammer about the head of fence post, with a weighted crane wire on a Rig, with the brittle fingered winching of a north sea haul, or with a hand, knife, gun, grenade or club across another human’s being.

But unlike their forebears, whose best suit only came out for a wedding and a funeral, these men wear the wrapping of wedding and funeral as their work clothes.

Perhaps it is because their lives are marked on a potentially much shorter trajectory than everyone else’s that they need to live (and wear) all of their lives at once.

But there suddenly was the striking truth of it for me.

Theirs is a look of the open-coffin funeral. They have the look of a dead man walking.

The Security personnel had that way of letting their arms drop in a V in front of them, crossing at the wrists, with one hand placed across the other at hip height.

It takes little for those same wrist-crossed ‘hand-over-hand’ arms to move upwards towards the middle of their chest to a point of eternal peace and repose – like some stone hewn sculpting of the great knight at their final rest atop the crypt.  

So, the open coffin look; that of a corpse in slightly ill fitting suit they rarely or ever wore, shoes over shined, plasticky and new. The body deflating before one’s eyes, collapsing back into the folds of the suit as the last sub atomic vestiges of their living self leave the cadaver.

And now that I think back to everything from pictures of the Rat Pack and their ‘Italo-American’ Minders, to Russian secret policemen around the Kremlin, to bouncers in any city, to the petite gangsters of any over cologne cocktail bar, the look is the universal look of the Funeral.

I realized that these men seem to have raided the dressing up box of the funeral home, and perhaps there is something bleakly fitting in that they are dressed for a funeral that might given their job come to them, far quicker than you or I.

At a more rarified level, the relationship between men of violence (be they Kings, Tribal Warlords or Gangsters – there is little difference to be fair in their differing shades of socio-psychopathy) and the sartorial plumage of success is long established.

It seems that preening either pre or post violent Armageddon seems to fulfill a number of roles.

CIVILIZATION – To cloak the generator of said violence is some form of cloth grandeur and reward – like an animal skin post the brutal hunt – wrapping oneself in the prize of your violence is quite a primal past time.

ACQUISTION Equally, plunder in the shape of Cloths of gold and silk embroidered with gemstones were the first thing the status-thirsty barbarian would plump for post massacre of the innocence or après a little light butchering of the fat pigs of mercantile avarice.

UTILITY It is worth also remembering that filching a rather natty pair of strides, boots or a well made greatcoat has been the historic stock in trade of most everyone from gunslingers in the wild and rather badly dressed West to soldiers traipsing through thirty below along the Eastern Front – both the Napoleonic and WWII versions.

So the idea of clothing in some shape or form as trophies of violent conquest or subjugation has ‘form’ one might say. 

But most particularly, it is in the suits shirts shoes and accessories – the lizard skin belts, Gucci shoes, encrusted Rolex watches – of the modern day gangster that we see the preening version most vividly adorned – a modern take on the look passed down through the folklore and photographic record of the Italo-American mobster and those that aped their fashionable aspirations – of the poor kid done good; taking their place besides the senators, sages and celebrities of their age.

(Note I have not included the Afro- American and Anglo-Jamaican street gangs in this note as their sartorial aspirations broadly lie in the polar opposite direction – drawing from the dime store sports clothing rip offs and cheap synthetic shirts of their poor streets and the ghetto penitentiary look of the slung trouser inmate of the US Penal system.)

The UK mobsters of the late 40s 50s and 60s were little different to their American cousins and their middle european counterparts. London gangs sported a similar uniform of gaudy suits, over stated silk shirts, razor sharp ties and shoes – over styled and over cut.

Sartorially obsessing men with violent hearts.

To make such an observation may seem flippant in such times, when the news is filled with so much unholy (or for many and to their eternal shame) holy murderous brutality being unleashed on so may innocents by dreadful mobsters, warlords, politicians, tyrants, sovereign states and laughably-lauded Royal Houses.

But maybe in doing this I am searching for a way of easily identifying all of those who have this easy brutality in them.

My reasoning being that if one was able to pinpoint them that easily, and on a global scale, perhaps, and just perhaps someone’s god or gods somewhere, or some form of omnipotent being, or even a calamitous act of science (think Big Bang but on a smaller more human scale, with laser like targeting, really nasty Kevlar piercing particles and an eye for badly dressed violent men) would wipe their faculty and kind from the face of the earth.

But the first problem with this fantasy is that there are also a whole heap of sartorially challenged men out there who might get offed along with them which would constitute a bit of a whoops ( and a rather immediate resource issue for most financial services sales departments out there)

The other problem is that in promoting that scale of vengeful murderous ugliness, I would become just like the men in bad suits with violent hearts: which is a nightmare.

Next thing I know, it’ll be Officers Club, Oxford street. Dark blue wool suit. Over sized vents. Bad lapels. No real button holes. Synthetic yoke and quarter lined. ‘Invisible’ rayon stitching. footballer fat long knot silk tie.

Stage two: a light criminal conviction for mild affray – followed closely by escalating madness with power tools.  

Final destination: a box which, as Ted Moult put so beautifully for so many years, is fully air tight with hard wood surround.

Here’s to well dressed gentle people.

 

 

I watched a film today. A discrete film. An understated film. A short film.

No popcorn. No slash cut dash glut editing. No highly confected verite cutaways. No corporate schlock horror probe. No desperately arch atavistic activist paddling in their own propaganda.

The film, by the Copenhagen Film Company, focused all of its attention on one man; a gentleman of about 60 years of age. The camera is unwavering. A set up shot. A few discernible cuts. Otherwise, clean clinical but mostly respectful.

Sitting in a sparse elevated office, we see incidentally that life relentlessly trammels on below and behind the speaker regardless of us and our elevated conversations; cars on streets going about their business.

The man, Mads Ovlisen, a Senior Advisor at the United Nations Global Compact. speaks of running sustainable businesses. He speaks of the UNGC committed to setting the agenda and aligning policy around sustainability issues – Energy, Water, Agriculture, Renewables, Food, Transportation, Building and Pharmaceuticals: most every pillar and issue one might ever imagine turning up on a sustainability strategy slide.

He speaks of a discrete yet powerful stakeholder group who collectively make astonishing impacts in the world through their brands and businesses.

He speaks of how much fortitude it takes to merge civil and corporate interests

The man speaks of things far from the ears or the offices of the average Brand Jonny or Jane; and probably far from their frame of reference or, to be blunt, self interest.

Though, to be fair, they would I hope understand the emotion that the film evoked in me.

Maya Angelou’s exposition on emotion versus reason: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” is a powerful philosophical sound bite for an ad man or woman looking to do more creative and insightful creative storytelling.

It is one I respect as I do spend most of my time seeking to make very complex things simple through creative story telling.

But the storytelling here was not some confected theme or hashtag slogan mantra being played out. The storytelling here was in the nature of the Storyteller.

It was not the dry content of his words that compelled me: though there was one axial moment in his discourse that fixed in my memory.

He (unsurprisingly in an axial moment) made what was for me an axiomatic statement – one which sticks in my memory.

His axiom was thus: “this is about how a company makes its money, not about how it spends it”

I found this statement scintillatingly simple. Its power for me derived from the way in which it frames the resilience strategy of a company with such philosophical clarity.

If a company finds that its focus resides in the first part of the axiomatic phrase – the pursuit of a more sustainable business is infused with a rich seam – of purpose beyond profit, ethical perspectives and corporate morality – and it gives a clear measure of the humanity enshrined within that company.

If the focus is on the second, then the company is about rational efficiencies and economies and smart procurement – a far less compelling and more importantly far less desirable mantra in attracting the right people towards that company. 

The reason why the subtle difference is or should be so important to companies is rooted in the part of their resilience strategy that demands best possible future talent be attracted in to the business.

The leadership and purpose at play in the first shading is vastly more attractive to Millennials than the second, which suddenly feels quite ’90s Business School in comparison.

Its not about which one is right or wrong. It is about which one is more powerful and compelling: and fit for the purpose.

And though the ability to sustain itself financially is paramount and primary to any business’s success, its ability to relentlessly and profitably attract best in class new and enlightened talent has to be the only strategy for future growth and stability.

As I have said, for me, though powerful, it is not the axiom in his treatise that I found so compelling.

He was the story. The storyteller as the living embodiment of the story he tells. It was not what he was saying so much as how he said it: his demeanour in the telling.

Simply put, his easy intelligence held lightly, the fixedness and the quiet purpose of his delivery were what drew me in.

His eyes and his voice where in some ways hypnotic. A ruse perhaps the cynics might say. Or is he just another modulated technocrat? Maybe.

But the simple fact for me is that his demeanour, delivery and his intention created license for me to both find his arguments authentic and trustworthy.

I would go and listen to him speak again. I WANT to find out more of what’s in his head and heart.

And therein lies the emotional killer insight.

Having spent an inordinate amount of time around the professional cabal of the sustainability world and the consultancies that advise them, I realize now that I find them often no different to the sociopaths and psychopaths of the financial and advertising worlds they so often deride.

The messianic fervor of righteousness is never far away. One need only scratch a little to find it.

I said once that I was stunned by the amount of self interest I found in what is supposedly vaunted as a shared interest space. In the 3 years between that observation and today that feeling has only strengthened.

This is where the kettle pots and blackening may well begin.

So to be clear, that is not to say that the self interest or self advancement, a certain over confidence, or arrogance and a particularly singular and thick skinned trajectory have not been wielded by self interested individuals to make brilliant and collectively beneficial things happen.

The application of one’s personal mettle in the room to achieve an objective is a precarious process at the best of times – and self PR in a good cause is a dangerous tight rope to walk at the best of times. One shouldn’t be pilloried for faltering or getting it wrong sometimes.

Furthermore, doing so while traversing the particular social minefield of a leading edge cause that requires a deft combination of rare scientific and analytical rigour and messy irrational populist behaviour change is verging on Mission Impossible status.

I have been known to hop about a stage wrapped in my own personal theatre espousing methodologies that are of personal interest to me first and foremost.

So I am the last one to talk. I could never say that the cult of personality is a satanic pall over us all.

BUT the sudden clarity the film gave me around those simple levers and pulleys: a voice and eyes that I trust.

And the sudden realization that imparting a world view where the smile barely penetrates past the retina, or simply fixes like a grimace slung under cold eyes is not going to move this forwards.

Playing ones intellect and credentials before you into a very carefully prepared rooms like a buttered juggernaut to ensure the room is won takes us nowhere – other than to the next room.

Does that mean I think we should all grin like an idiot and play the fool? Or not deploy fierce intellects when they are needed?  

Not at all.

I would be the first to say intellect wielded well, whether in arch seriousness or as playful banter is more a matter of style, circumstance and empathy than integrity. I am the first to admit that my own flippancy and ‘lightness of touch’ means that I regularly misrepresent my deeper values and beliefs in this space amongst people who do not see these as even faintly redeeming character traits. I am certain it annoys the crap out of some of the more esteemed minds of the sector, especially if they feel people like me trivialize their cause. A Shiny brand jonny. A Catch phrase Charlie. And an interloper to boot.

But I am on a populist agenda: I want us to find the language, the demeanour and the presence that makes more people turn towards us, listen and find what we impart desirable and accommodating of the real life they lead.

So for me there needs to be creative storytelling based upon what people care about to illuminate sustainability truths. And there needs to be humanity. But mostly there needs to be trust. Trust that is human in its evocation not one demanded through an attrition of rationality.

It’s a simple human mechanism: Do I trust the person imparting the ‘wisdom’ to me.

Do they make me feel bad and stupid? Or good and smart? Great. Thanks. Two of those please.

Who knows. Perhaps I a far too one dimensional for all of this and I miss the complexities and subtleties inherent in the thrust and parry.  Shallow Is the new Deep.

Al I know is that the average man or woman trying to get to the end of the month and have a nice life without bankrupting themselves need some Trust in there to even begin to listen and change tack.

And degrees, credentialing, linked in profiles or executive steering committee positions just don’t cut it with them. That’s your dinner party conversation. Not their life.

So I return to the man who speaks discretely. Sets out his stall. His beliefs and the benefits of what he does.

And at the end of it he gets my vote. I’d put him in a pub with a load of people I was trying to bring round to the cause. He might not be their cup of tea. They might even find him boring.

But I think they’d trust him.

The film can be found at http://thisistouch.com/this-is/the-news/

  

 

 

Just for fun – I endeavoured to make a small childlike scribble of the trajectory and meeting place between science and faith just beyond our sphere of consciousness.

Mainly because I was just wondering what happens when we cast our faith and knowledge into the void? And what comes back.

The sub-atomic particular and turbulent cosmic fizz from which all things known and unknown to us are formed – and from which all things reveal themselves – sits just beyond our consciousness.

It represents the great battle-ground on which the fundamentalists of faith and science seek to prevail.

To one group – the faithful – the fizz is an immeasurable fixed expansive and spiritual state with infinite potency and multiplicity rooted in one spiritual universal truth.

To the others – the rational – the fizz is a measurable volatile dynamic and expanding state with infinite faculty and possibility rooted in one mathematical universal truth.

SCIENCE the systematic enterprise that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe is an amazing thing and it reveals new and wondrous things to us everyday. But there is still so much unknown to us in science – and the more we discover the less we know. We now know that quantum physics and the maths that science roots itself in have been found to be common in material terms and in the more obvious nuclear physical world. But they have no idea how they overlap or how to close the chasm between them. And for all the sharp cornered reason based truths of it, even the most rigorous scientific fact or data is open to misinterpretation and manipulation for much the same reason as its theological counterpart. It exists in a rare society dislocated from the populous, hidden and closed. Its arcane nature renders it as arcane as theology. Equally, the moment the human hand or mind touches some absolute scientific truth, it is sullied: subject to human flaw and spoiling

FAITH There is much to be said for faith and its emollient and redeeming features in the hands and hearts of good people. Its ability to elevate and inspire the masses to elevate our human existence and civilise our societies can be very powerful. But this confidence or trust in a person thing, deity or view is wonderful. But we need to draw a very clear line between Faith with a big prescribed religious F and the little f of that belonging to people who just believe in something greater than us and beyond our comprehension and control

The doctrines or teachings of a religion can become a tyranny, as a belief not based on proof is far more vulnerable to manipulation than one that is rooted in measurable fact. Theology becomes the intellectual plaything of a rare society closed to the people and open to politicising and empire building, much the same as science.

The application of either kind of faith in absentia of any proof demands a leap of it, which in turn can lead to a model of sightless following. Blind faith especially in the prescribed religions suffocates honest open discourse. In this the framework lacks resilience – an adaptive reflex nature – and this is rooted in an often demonstrated inability to listen and react to things they don’t agree with in fundamental terms – unsurprisingly there is no evolutionary nature to their dogmas that can respond fluidly to the flux and flow of knowledge – which is the crux of their issue.

The big beautiful Boomerang

But perhaps for the rest of us just trying to find out how best to get to the end of the month without losing our dignity, destroying our planet or bombing our neighbour in some geopolitical fit of pique, it is the arc or trajectory that should hold the greatest reassurance. Because perhaps it allows us to understand the relative nature of these polarities of our existence in a way that is palatable and slightly more understandable.

We know that if we throw our faith out there into the atmosphere and beyond the personifications and forms our various faith-based religions apply to the infinite unknown – it eventually meets an expansive indecipherable omnipotent state beyond our comprehension. And returns to us as a fact of science

We know that if we throw our current scientific knowing out there into outer and inner space far beyond the reach of the hubble scope and microscope and out of human sight it eventually meets the inexplicable chaos of scientific truths still far beyond our human comprehension. And returns to us as an act of faith.

Out of Sight Out of Kind

Perhaps in the particular throng just beyond our comprehension we spy the missing link in the story telling of our human existence in relative terms both spiritual and material.

And by that I don’t mean who owns the story – though the human condition predicts both parties will try.

The subsequent bun-fight that would ensue if the Hadron Collider did reveal that the Higgs Bosun Particle does in fact play a role in turning mass into matter – and whether that was therefore just a further demonstration of the awesome nature of god’s great mystery espoused by the men of Faith or whether it simply removes the God head from the cosmos as many scientists would like to do once and for all.    

That both sets of fundamentalists – accent on the mentalists part – might ever manage not only to appreciate but also accept that in that subatomic fizz that reaches from a sub cellular to an inter stellar dimension, there is a particular truth of such scale and magnitude that it renders both of their emphatic natures and their insistence on continually throwing stones seem simply wilful and precocious.

That either could even for a moment imagine that they control the conversation and define the absolutes in this realm is simply arrogant and ridiculous.

So I say boomerang our beautiful existence in either direction and be happy if when thrown out there, your faith returns as small spark of science and your science as a small act of faith. Both are illuminating and enriching when kept out of the hands of the lunatics who would have either dictate the shape and form of our human happiness and sense of self-determination.

G’day.