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Being assaulted | How to run a hospice; metaverse and Caryl Churchill
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Being assaulted | How to run a hospice; metaverse and Caryl Churchill

Anoushka on being assaulted. COO on running hospices + COVID. My next show: How We Die (Nov 26th, Theatre Deli). Philosopher, Jo Wolff, on social model of disablity; ESG jobs

Benjamin Yeoh
Oct 10, 2021
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If you only have time for one blog this week I recommend, Claire Montagu on running hospices, COVID and being a SPAD. Let me know if you are interested in an OpenSpace Business as Force for Good workshop. Thoughts this week:

  • Claire Montagu on running hospices, COVID and being a SPAD

  • Why I favour music/art/technology over politics

  • OpenSpace Work Shop: Business as Force for Good

  • My next show: How We Die (Nov 26th, Theatre Deli) and next meet up Nov 26

  • Child Death thoughts: The Audacity of Death

  • Philosopher, Jo Wolff, on social model of disablity

  • LSE students - thanks for coming to listen to ESG

  • Alex Edmans - listening to his book launch, Grow The Pie

  • Reflections on watching Caryl Churchill’s latest play: metaverse, death and what if...?

  • Anoushka being assaulted

  • ESG and sustainablity jobs (at end will need to scroll/download full messgae)

  • Links of the week

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What song(s) would you want played at your funeral? Let me know. Long-time readers may recall I asked this a while ago as part of my on-going preparation for a performance piece on death.

Using the strategy of “creating in public” to push myself to make and do, I am putting out my scratch of Thinking Bigly: How We Die. For those outside London or with other responsibilities and accessibility needs, we will be live streaming the performance! That’s right the technology used by gamers and the National Theatre is coming to a computer near you. I’m also committing to considering all my performances to be “relaxed” this means if you want to come and go, stand or wiggle, or whatever - feel free.

What’s the best way for Ben to die? Shape his story. Plan his funeral. An interactive show where you help Ben have his best death.

Book here, 26 November 7pm. Stream is pay what you can/want.

There will also be a mingle afterwards for those who just want a chat and drink. Come and let’s talk about death (and so life), baby.

This idea of learning by doing may have roots from my drawing and making practise starting roughly as a teenager. It continues into my podcasting. I don’t have any single solid reason for either creating my performance-lecture or for reaching out to people and asking them on a podcast but it does happen to be fantastic way to learn deeply. You don’t want to talk to a philosopher or epidemiologist without covering the work of said philosopher or epidemiologist.

This week: Surprised-not-surprised that economists disagree on what is happening with inflation, how important it is (or not) and to what extent behavioural factors (or supply and demand) are drivers. It ends up being confusing for decision makers and the woman in the street. It differs by country, but my own personal reading is that while “wages” are increasing (see truck drivers) much if not all of this is cancelled out because the cost of many goods/ services are increasing.

The so-called “real wage” is flat. Other subtle impacts such as choice is also down. For a variety of complex reasons, world-wide energy prices are likely to remain high for at least 6 months until April. Complex systems are hard, if not near impossible to predict well, but to the extent you can, I’d probably consider running longer into building “resilience” into your life. That means at the margin, I’d not be buying a bitcoin but giving your life some stronger cushioning.

In some ways that’s typically what some risk thinkers often suggest. For instance, Nassim Taleb on his ideas of being anti-fragile. From the arcivie here’s Taleb’s commencent address in 2016.


Neither Clare Montagu or myself are famous. In one way only is this a shame - more people need to hear her insightful and fascinating account of running a London hospice group as COVID hit.

Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
This is one of my most fascinating podcasts. I learned about running a hospice and the mad world of government advisers. Self recommending.
Clare Montagu: Running a hospice during COVID, how to die well, and being a special advisor to government | Podcast — Then Do Better<p>Ben Yeoh. Benjamin Yeoh’s personal site exploring sustainability, investing, arts and food.</p>thendobetter.com

October 5th 2021

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What was it like running a hospice in London when COVID struck? “It was really horrible… COVID was not the way that we would choose people to die. There was a sort of myth that people were all going to die anyway. Not true. We had patients dying of COVID.

Both people in the community and people in our hospice beds. Staff were themselves getting sick either from within the community or outside it. Although, we don't think we had much transmitted within the hospice, but staff were getting sick. We had operational problems with staff shortages. We immediately had real problems with access to PPE, particularly masks.

Guidance was changing daily. Challenging to keep up with national guidance where you had to order PPE, from what PPE you were supposed to wear, how you were supposed to manage COVID, how you dealt with staff. Because at the time there was no testing.

We had staff who were often very nervous, very scared, patients who were dying, no one really knew what was going on and no national guidance really that we could work towards. So there was this real sense of being completely out of control with a kind of wrestling with an octopus that you just had no idea when it was going to end and how it was going to end.

The death industry was also starting to stockpile and we had a mortuary at the hospice and suddenly you couldn't get body bags. ...And there was one day at the end of March when we had been promised a drop of PPE, we were running low on masks and we had two days where the PPE hadn't come and we had less than 24 hour supply of masks. And we just didn't know what to do because we were going to run out - it's laughable now, we were Googling what you could do with incontinence pants and masking tape - On the same day funeral directors were not picking people up from our mortuary and the mortuary was full.

So I started to ring around, does anyone know what the kind of London resilience plan, because this fundamentally is a sort of public health issue and there must be, I don't know, the army gets involved or something because you can't have people who are dead not being managed …. And again, everyone I spoke to in the NHS or funeral directors, no one seemed to know what were the arrangements for managing people who were dead.

Clare also has some funny stories from her time as a government special adviser. Transcipt and video here. Podcast below.

And a teaser for next podcast from epidemiologist Meaghan Kall:

Twitter avatar for @kallmemegMeaghan Kill 👻🔪🎃☠️ @kallmemeg
I’m still not 💯 sure what I want to be when I grow up - but here’s some free career advice 😉 ⤵️

Benjamin Yeoh @benyeohben

@kallmemeg Here's a teaser for fun. This is @kallmemeg Meaghan's career life advice 👇👇👇 (needs sounds on sorry no captions). It was super awesome to have such an insightful + engaging chat. Back catalogue while we await post production if you wish to peruse: https://t.co/m4tJvJjVvE https://t.co/Fo6HM5RjHf

October 9th 2021

3 Retweets42 Likes

Thinking about the social model of disability which I reference at the start of the letter. It’s an idea that philosopher Jo Wolff explains well here:

"...You change the world rather than trying to change or assist the person. Once you understand that, once you try to change the world to accommodate more people that means things like disability become less stigmatizing. That you don't have to identify in order to be helped, for example. If it's about redistribution, you have to identify as a disabled person to claim your benefits. If we've rearranged the world so that being a disabled person in that respect is no longer a disadvantage, then no one even has to think about it. ...You just get on with your life, right? Now this is an inspiring vision  that disability helps us think through. I normally don't like to do this  ideal world theory but I think in disability cases, it's very interesting to think, how would we have constructed the world differently if we took people with disabilities seriously from the start. Because what we've done is construct a world for the 80% who aren't disabled and have made small adjustments around the edges for the other 20%. If we had started from the point of view that the world is a diverse place with people with different mental and physical attributes, how would we've done things differently? I think now that is a great thought experiment that can be quite inspiring to policy. So do I think a disabled life is less valuable than a non-disabled life? No, I don't. I think we may have constructed the world so some lives are much more difficult for people than other lives. Some people face much more obstacles in their life than others. Certainly some people can do more than others. Certainly some people are in more pain and discomfort and lack of mobility  than others. So there are differences. ...But it's the only life that the person has got..." More in the full interview.


I’m helping Improbable with promoting their Open Space work.  If you or your organisation are interested in unconferences, openspace and participatory work then we are running a workshop on afternoon 28 October.  Let me know.


LSE students, thanks for coming to listen to me on ESG. My host told me I was on the same stage that Muhammed Ali was on 40+ years go… I spoke about the importance of thinking about the extra-financial capitals: human capital, natural capital, intellectual capital…

Those new readers fron LSE. There’s a similar type of presentation with a few more technicals that I did for the CFA.


After Alex Edman’s response to Tariq Fancy, it was good to hear him speak on his book in a delayed launch.

Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
Pleased to be listening @aedmans Alex Edmans on his book Grow The Pie on how companies can have purpose and profit.
growthepie.net
Image

October 6th 2021

1 Retweet6 Likes

Edmans makes the case for a pie-growing mindset. Acknowledging the challenges and trade-offs in pie-splitting, Edmans argues that pie-growing creates the most welfare for the most people. 

Core ideas Edmans argues for (along with pie-growing) are:
-the importance of “omission errors”,
-the multiplication principles,
-the importance of materiality judgements,
-and comparative advantage.

If I were to pick out two other principles that weave throughout the densely argued book, they would be the ideas of personal agency and a reliance on fact-based evidence over ideology.

Interspersed with lively stories and backed by evidence, it makes for better reading than a dry academic text. However, it is still packed with references to studies and data that makes the book dense reading and above the one-shot idea business books that line airport bookshops.

Edmans moves on from the theory to articulate three principles to use when judging value creation.  These are:

Multiplication: An activity should have social benefits that exceed its private costs
Comparative Advantage: Social benefit should outweigh social costs
Materiality: Activity should benefit material stakeholders (a firm is not all things, to all people)

I await book two!

  • Link to Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3mu3GdH.

  • My short overview: https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2020/4/17/grow-the-pie-alex-edmans-book-review-and-webinar and,

  • April 2020 webinar: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/16035/396482


Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
I reflect on What If If Only, the Caryl Churchill play at the @royalcourt. This takes me through death, the multiverse and @tylercowen advice to his younger self "That when I get to be older, don't give me any advice."
Caryl Churchill: My reflection on What If If Only, death and the multiverse — Then Do Better<p>Ben Yeoh. Benjamin Yeoh’s personal site exploring sustainability, investing, arts and food.</p>thendobetter.com

October 5th 2021

  • Reflections on seeing the latest Caryl Churchill play, What If If Only

  • I view Churchill as one of our greatest playwrights

  • My thoughts cross through the multiverse and death

  • Passing through children, Tyler Cowen and OpenSpace participatory meetings

Death is on my mind.  So is the multiverse. 

Death is on my mind as I recently talked to Clare Montagu about what it is like to run a hospice through COVID.*

How we should speak plainly on death. 

Death is on my mind as Anoushka has reflected that death has challenged the thinking of my autistic 12 year old son* and my youngest questioned death early.

Death is on my mind as my latest performance piece is about How We Die.*

Death seems to be on the mind of SOMEONE in Caryl Churchill’s play, What If If Only. 

Even more than death the play asks What If … ? 

This is a question humans ask ourselves. 

My 9 year old embodies this when asking and debating the multiverse. 

What if What if What if  …? 

It’s not only the Marvel superhero multiverse (and the recent series What If… starring the Watcher). Consequentialist philosophers and the like think through the implications of What Ifs. The small changes that might mean, for instance, Hitler was never born. Before the big splashy Marvel multiverse, we had Sliding Doors in popular culture. A 1998 film that might have escaped today’s 20 somethings, but probably not Churchill.

This fantasy and science fiction tends to teach to be wary of tampering the timeline.

A podcast host, Auren Hoffman, asks* in the year 2021

…what advice do you wish you could have told your younger self?

Tyler Cowen answers 

That when I get to be older, don't give me any advice. Because look, for me, things have gone pretty well. So there's always the risk with advice. Even if you make a local improvement, you'll screw up the global path. Things have gone well, of course, you could have done better. But again, type one and type two error. Let's let that one sit. So no advice.

…advice is dangerous, how well can you predict other people's paths? Advice maybe is overrated. 

I think a lot of advice is a placebo. The person asks for advice because they want the feeling they've done everything possible, before doing what they're going to do anyway. No, I don't mind that. But once you realize that it's like advice, I don't necessarily think advice is advice, it’s helping the person process their own mental and emotional state.

SOMEONE meditates on death - whines morosely - and conjures  the FUTURE. 

The FUTURE declares  

I’m a ghost of a dead future

… 

Dont Dont Dont let them all in. Of course there's so many so many features that didn't happen like drops of rain grains of sand atoms in your heart. You’ll have no peace if they all come after you and I'm the best I'm a brilliant Future and I could easily have happened but stupid stupid caps choosing the wrong things and let me die. I'm a future you'd really like, everyone would have like me if I happened. 

SOMEONE  Because you're what?

Equality and cake and no bad bits at all and I've been glimpsed I've been died for in China and Russia and South America and here here in little country's history long ago people wanted me they want me over and over and forty fifty years ago I had friends I really nearly and my enemy say I'm utopia and nowhere place and I'm not I needn't be perfect but better better than what and I never happened and if I had happened this nasty desk wouldn't have I'm the one why wouldn't I promise and you've got to make me real you got to make me a real live 

In calling to the dead, SOMEONE is activating the problems of the multiverse

Of wishful thinking. 

Aside. Note Churchill’s use of words. Not the extreme truncation of certain previous works. No “ / “ notation. But a careful use of punctuation, repetition - poetic - in that condensed use of language, words and sound.  This gives a hint on the page of how an actor transforms this.

In Top Girls, Churchill poses questions on the role of women through history. 

In Serious Money, Churchill satires finance and our relationship with money. 

In A Number, she provokes on identity, genetics and cloning.

In Blue Heart the very form of the play speaks to the impossibility of completion and understanding.

Churchill takes human concepts and ideas and embodies them in theatre.

For me (I suppose I can only speak for me, and then am I even sure?)  What If If Only meditates on death, crosses the multiverse and ends up

With PRESENT and FUTURE with SOMEONE stuck not quite letting go of the past 

“gone but I can’t quite stop talking to you yet”

Says SOMEONE in the second last speech in the play. 

As the CHILD FUTURE declares 

I’m going to happen. 

In an Open Space meeting we are guided*

Whoever comes are the right people.

Wherever it happens is the right place.

Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.

Whenever it starts is the right time.

When it is over, it is over.

I’m left with this reflection

  • When it comes to death and what ifs

  • Speak plainly and let go. 

Blog here.


This makes me so sad and angry still, and I feel blind still to all the assault and harrassment women undergo.

Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
Still makes me sad and angry to my bones when ⁦@Spittingyarn⁩ Anoushka was assaulted and robbed.
The Space Between — SPITTING YARN“The unpredictability of what might happen next terrified me. He was still and quiet, considering his next move. He had a coiled energy and I could sense he was poised to run. He would leave soon. But he wanted more from me.”spitting-yarn.com

October 6th 2021

Anoushka being assaulted:

I lay on the floor exactly as I had fallen, trying to work out what damage had been done. My knee throbbed and my cheekbone rang like a struck cymbal. I should get up, I thought. But I didn’t. I lay for a moment longer while the adrenalin ebbed away. What an oblivious, diamond-wearing fool I was. Be aware of your surroundings. Isn’t that always the first tip in those ‘Safety Advice for Women’ articles? How had I not known he was behind me? How had I allowed this to happen?

~ 

“Where’s your bag?”, he demanded, in a low, hard voice. 

It had fallen from my shoulder. I tried to answer but the glove muffled my reply. I gestured but the movement was hampered by his body leaning against mine. He towered above me. I knew instinctively that he must have been more than 6’ 5”. A university flatmate of mine, David, was a similar height, a gentle giant.

“Where’s the bag?”, the stranger repeated impatiently.

There was nothing benign about him.

Our subconsciousness lags only milliseconds behind actual events. The lag being the time it takes to transfer stimuli to our conscious perception. But my mind had been oddly slow on the uptake, lurching from irritation to confusion. Now, it caught up and panic washed through me. I was beginning to struggle to breathe around the padded nylon glove covering my nose and mouth. It pressed my head painfully against the wall, keeping me still. I reached up and pulled at his hand,

“I can’t breathe.”

More at her blog here.


Sustainability ESG Jobs…investment, corporate, academic…

(There’s a lot out in sustainablity world, hard to keep up. Bloomberg ESG team also looking.)

Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
London based folk, Check out this #ESG job at RBC Capital Markets: VP/Director, Sustainable Finance Group UK & Europe.
linkedin.com/jobs/view/2734…

October 4th 2021

Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
Sustainability Job: Senior Product Environmental Specialist @AstraZeneca to support the development and delivery of our life cycle assessment programme to enable the business to understand the environmental impact of our products, processes and services.

October 7th 2021

Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
London based #sustainability investment #job at @RLAM_UK
Sustainable Investment AnalystSustainable Investment Analystjobs.royallondon.com

October 9th 2021

Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
Research Assitants jobs for Transistion Pathway Initiative at LSE.
jobs.lse.ac.uk/ViewVacancyV2.…
Image

October 9th 2021

Lots from Katie Kross…

Twitter avatar for @Katie_KrossKatie Kross @Katie_Kross
Job Opening: Sustainable Finance Climate Economics Associate, Morgan Stanley (New York) #climate #research #sustainability #ESG
Sustainable Finance Climate Economics AssociateClick the link provided to see the complete job description.ms.taleo.net

October 7th 2021

1 Retweet2 Likes

Links:

Energy

Twitter avatar for @Peters_GlenGlen Peters @Peters_Glen
Primary energy use dropped a dramatic 4.5% in 2020, but despite the collapse, renewables continued to grow almost on trend ↑ 9.7% (solar ↑ 20%, wind ↑ 11%). The big drops were in coal ↓ 4.2%, oil ↓ 9,7%, & gas ↓ 2.3%. Let's see about 2021... Data:
bp.com/en/global/corp…
Image

October 6th 2021

51 Retweets121 Likes

An awaiting disaster:

Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
The Ship That Became a Bomb... A disaster that is very likely to crystalise, only seems a matter of when....
The Ship That Became a BombEd Caesar reports on a decaying supertanker stranded in Yemen’s war zone with more than a million barrels of oil aboard. If—or when—it explodes or sinks, thousands may die.newyorker.com

October 7th 2021

Basic research

Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
"Public investment in basic research will pay for itself.".... Why Basic Science Matters for Economic Growth
Why Basic Science Matters for Economic GrowthBy Philip Barrett, Niels-Jakob Hansen, Jean-Marc Natal and Diaa Noureldin عربي, 中文, Español, Français, 日本語, Português Public investment in basic research will pay for itself. The pandemic has rolled back decades of economic progress and wrought havoc on public finances. To build back better and fig…blogs.imf.org

October 8th 2021

Sensory Awareness

Twitter avatar for @SpittingyarnAnoushka @Spittingyarn
October is Sensory Awareness Month. My son has sensory processing differences which means he perceives the world differently. You can read more at the link below. #nationalsensoryawarenessmonth #sensoryprocessingdisorder #spd #autism #adhd
Homunculus — SPITTING YARN“…if I otherwise sang in the day, he would startle and clap his hands to his ears, recoiling, as if I had thrown a grenade in his lap.”spitting-yarn.com

October 8th 2021

1 Retweet2 Likes

US law

Twitter avatar for @benyeohbenBenjamin Yeoh @benyeohben
I learned a bunch in this opinion piece of the recent direction of the US Supreme Court and gives me an insight in to its likely future direction. This as I have seen argued might be one of the most powerful legacies of the Trump presidency.
Opinion | The Supreme Court Has Gone Off the RailsJustices who once derided judicial “meddling” are now meddlers themselves.nytimes.com

October 4th 2021

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