Keeping the Faith... under control!

I have long noticed a strong correlation between stupid people and people who don't agree with me.  Perhaps you've noticed the same phenomena?

The English actor Colin Firth noticed the same thing but in an almost tongue-in-cheek experiment took it further.  He decided that people who strongly opposed his views must have something wrong with their brains, so he funded MRI scans for a group of them!  How English!

And lo and behold the experiment showed he was right!

Now, Colin Firth holds strong liberal views – that is, Liberal as opposed to Conservative views – as most actors do.  What the MRI scans revealed about those with strong conservative views was that they all had enlarged amygdalas.  Now the amygdala is part of the ‘limbic system’ – that part of our brain which is emotionally wired and evolved for black and white decision-making. 

Limbic brain thinking demands fast and clear decisions – right/wrong, good/bad, run/don't run.  In situations where immediate decisions are essential, for example the rhinoceros is charging at you, weighing up the pros and cons and talking through all the options is probably not in the best interests of your survival.  The limbic brain demands closure – knowing that there are lions about but not knowing exactly where, is not a question to let slip from the mind or to be left for another time.  And the limbic brain is an evolutionary attribute of all mammals – it is emotionally wired, it provides rapid (almost instant) awareness of what others of our kind are doing and how they are reacting and therefore deals with herd instinct, its good at self-programming for automated responses and developing specific physical skills through repetition and practice.  And it’s the part of the brain that can be consciously reprogrammed by some types of personal development work.

Over the top of the limbic brain we humans have evolved the cerebral cortex – the part of our brain that deals with complexity, language, maths and higher cognitive functions.  It gives us the ability to think about thinking, to reflect, to create, to socialise – and to form our own views on reality.  Of course, as humans we all have both the limbic system and the cerebral cortex, but it appears that one can dominate the other.  It's easy to demonstrate that under the influence of alcohol or stressful situations the cerebral cortex becomes impaired and we revert to the more basic limbic responses… well at least I do!

What Colin Firth's experiment gave a glimpse into is an exciting recent discovery called neuro-plasticity, meaning that our brains change physically to provide more and better of the type of thinking that we habitually employ.  The implications are huge!  Suddenly we have an insight into why some otherwise intelligent people can continue to hold views that deny science, for instance.

When the limbic brain dominates, it becomes most important for us to know what ‘we’ believe, to run with the herd, to keep the faith, and most importantly to resist taking any non-herd-conforming decisions or actions.  In short, go for the minimum personal risk option – think and act conservatively.  And to read from the prayer book of what ‘we’ believe, is to reinforce the authority of those beliefs – recent psychological studies have shown that the most powerful influence on conservative thinkers is the need for ‘authority’.

It's not that climate deniers, to label one group, are stupid – rather it is that if they were to accept specific scientific facts as valid it would directly threaten the integrity of their dominant thinking system.  And since that system does not deal in reasoning, the acceptance of inconvenient facts can threaten identity itself.  If my ‘limbic identity’ is threatened I will automatically revert to herd survival behaviour – I immediately switch to instinctual responses and become impervious to ‘facts’.

So the limbic system directs the cerebral cortex to argue for authoritative conservation of the status quo.  And what we hear then is rationalisation of primitively-formed limbic beliefs rather than any form of evidence-based reasoning.

And thanks to neuro-plasticity, the more the amygdala is used, the bigger and more powerful it becomes – and the more we want simple answers to complex questions:

• ·         Carbon tax – are you for or against?
• ·         Economic growth is essential to prosperity – right?
• ·         Our religion is the only true religion – right?

So, does the size of your amygdala determine your voting preferences?  According to a new book, ‘The Republican Brain’ by Chris Mooney the answer is ‘Yes, but it’s not quite that simple’.  It’s our psychological profiles that underpin all our life choices and choices are also influenced by circumstance – well at least that’s true if the cerebral cortex is in charge!

At this time in history we can ill-afford to be run by our amygdala.  We should have a healthy integrated emotional connection with others, but our cerebral cortex surely needs to be driving.

How can you tell what’s driving your thinking?  How strong is your need for closure; your need for simple answers; your need for an external authority to believe in; your need to belong to a group; your need to support one football team; your need to vote for the same old political party?

And if you find a strong need lurking in examples such as those, what would you have to let go of in order to free up that powerful free-thinking cerebral cortex? 

Blind faith is easy – its thinking that’s hard, but that’s what the world needs now!

'WE" has a dark side?

The ‘WE’ that I’ll refer to in this article is a phenomenon that applies to any group of three or more people – “Three actually is a crowd!”  Among 3 people there are 6 relationships in play (count them); among 10 people there are 90 relationships in play; if a group grows to 101 active members then there are 100 times more relationships than there are people in the group. 

The ‘WE’ I refer to then, is the energetic average of all that relationship energy – and for better or for worse it’s a much stronger force than any of its participating members.

That energetic average quickly becomes the culture or the ‘status quo’ of the group.  We have all been immersed in our society’s status quo from birth as an invisible context for living.  ‘WE’ provides a supportive structure that nurtures, develops and shapes us into adults who can contribute to its continued existence.  Of course a ‘WE’ the size of society is not homogeneous – there are many flavours and textures within a society that allow each of us to find our own place of belonging within the greater whole. 

But every ‘WE’ also does all it can to limit its members to that unwritten ‘status quo’ charter.  In fact every ‘WE’ has a dark side, whose motto is “Death to nonbelievers!”  Now while that may only be literally true for some religious fanatics, for every ‘WE’ there is a dark side that leans in that direction and does whatever it takes to maintain the status quo.

It's easy to discover the dark side of any ‘WE’ you belong to – for example:

• get personally involved with someone from a different culture and test your family’s reactions
• come out as being gay, or green, or even organic
• question the rational basis of your religious upbringing
• question the ethics of your company’s profit motives
• step outside the public service C.A.R.E. policy (cover arse, retain employment)
• join a personal development movement

Here’s how the dark side works to maintain the status quo:

• at first it resists – “You’re crazy!”
• then it tolerates – “You’re the odd one out in our group”,
• then it isolates – “Go to your strange meetings but don’t try converting us”,
• then it marginalises – “You do know it’s a cult and that you’re being brainwashed don’t you – cults are dangerous”,
• then it outlaws – “The authorities are investigating their possibly illegal activities”,
• and finally it eliminates – “We’re moving to ban fringe activities like this for the protection of… the status quo!”

Self-preservation at a collective level I guess.  The sad point is that the dark side does not distinguish between what is aiming to enhance life and what is aiming to diminish life – it only notices distance from its gravitational centre!

It seems that the only way that ‘WE’ changes is generationally – every 22 years or so there is a very significant shift, not brought about by some wise higher authority but by natural evolution.  Each new generation sets out to change the status quo in an entirely predictable way.  They reject the obvious excesses that the previous generation (their parents) stood for, and move to correct that.  But at the same time they fail to appreciate the subconscious drive that was also established by the parents’ generation, which has been the status quo since the new generation’s birth.  Such a generational shift is happening right now.

Gen Y is leading the current generational shift and using ‘social media’ and ‘occupy’ and ‘Anonymous’ as ways to assert the power of the collective over the individualistic win/lose excesses of the previous generation.  The previous generation still has the hold on power even though its ways are becoming more and more obvious, and less and less acceptable.  Its days are numbered and many conflicts of value systems are certain.  This is evolutionary, unavoidable and subconsciously driven, but there’s a very interesting side effect...

When we reject an old status quo for a new one, we tend to ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’.  The rejection of the old individualistic values also rejects the value of singular truth – that is, truth arrived at through scientific rigour (what we used to call ‘facts’) – in favour of a truth agreed by collective beliefs.  Published, formal scientific research becomes ‘just another opinion’, carrying no more weight than what the collective can talk itself into, aided of course by marketing spin, conspiracy theories, rumour, hope and huge amounts of projection!

No-one has a greater need to identify with and represent the rapidly shifting status quo than our politicians – their careers are built on it.  As collective belief becomes the dominant power it becomes easier to dismiss any ‘facts’ that might impede a desired reality – like man-made climate change, an unsustainable economic model, or anything else that portends an unpalatable future.

Mind you, the new status quo will centre on the primacy of the collective and bring many good things to that collective over the next 10-15 years, such as rebuilt public infrastructure that has been neglected for decades, an end to the excesses of corporate greed and the paucity of ineffective government.  But we have a long and rough road to traverse between here and there.

So meanwhile politicians try to identify with a powerbase of fickle collective belief influenced by the tweet of the day, rather than a personal vision for the country or an objective policy strategy.  When the status quo is in transition, the dark side will try to eliminate both the good and the bad aspects of the old order. 

Stay aware – and don’t be tempted by the cookies!

Notice Bored or Notice Board?

Psychologist Sherry Turkle, in a recent TED talk, summed up the current evolution of the Social Media phenomena as “I share – therefore I am”. 

I found that to be quite a scary observation, the implication being that unless I share I don’t exist!

Turkle claims that Social Media allows people to feel connected to others, but on their own terms.  Just like Goldilocks, not too much and not too little – just the right amount.  It allows people to avoid feeling alone and provides feedback that someone is listening.  It also allows people to present the face that they desire to present rather than to risk the vulnerability inherent in a real conversation. 

Turkle also claims that the core issue, that Social Media offers to hide, is people's fear of intimacy, and their discomfort with solitude.  What a narrow space that seems to be!

While intimacy and solitude are certainly the boundaries of relationship – in an all-or- nothing sense – I know from experience that an average person may fear one extreme or the other, but not usually both.  And a personal relationship between any two partners will, more often than not, display that dynamic.  Furthermore it’s true that a loving relationship over time provides the healing space for either extreme. 

Social Media does technically allow easy avoidance of negative relationships and easy seeking out of what the seeker would consider to be positive ones, but to present Social Media as providing an avoidance of natural relationship therapy is, in my opinion, labelling 700 million people as damaged.

I think there is something entirely different going on… 

The content of Facebook communications, from my studying some 250 postings from a diverse bunch of people, is certainly the minutiae of relationship.  The flavour of any one individual’s content becomes predictable – and that allows the personality of the sharer to shine through.  By sharing what appears to be the shallow trivia of daily experience (our humanness) we can build a deeper relationship with others – the obvious example being mothers and their children.

But here is the point that Turkle missed… Social Media is not about relationship at all – not in the sense of a substitute for the loving space that can only occur in one-on-one daily co-existence. 

Social Media is about relationship in the plural sense, which can only be defined as ‘community’.  If you’re familiar with the work of Ken Wilber, it exists exclusively in the ‘we’ quadrant.  That space is about being part of something, satisfying a need to belong, in a culture, in a family, in a network, in a community.  It’s about our “collective internal experience”, storytelling, shared values and even organised religion.

Suddenly there is a new light on the subject!  The overwhelming popularity of Social Media shows that it is filling a huge need for that sense of community, particularly in the younger generations.  Where was that sense lost?  Probably through evolution, but I suspect it’s been in deficit since around the time that television arrived.

So each ‘tweet’, each ‘share’, each genuine ‘like’ is a contribution freely made towards rebuilding that sense of community, not at the level of the ‘local village’ of 60+ years ago, but at the level the global village.  Evolution will always find a way to bring a balance to consciousness and we are merely the conduit through which she operates!  The ‘local village’ also allowed a ‘not one of us’ or a ‘them and us’ experience in social groups, locations, and religion.  In the ‘global village’ the potential is that there is just ‘us’.  Bring it on I say!

So next time you notice you’re bored – don’t just sit there – post something on the community notice board and help evolution along!

Rock, Paper, Scissors – you’re doing it wrong!

We have all played the game at some time – rock can break scissors – scissors can cut paper – paper can cover rock.  At any show of two hands you can win, lose or draw.

But there is a much deeper level at which that simple game also applies to life. 

Rock can be seen as actions or willpower – strong, dense and unbending – a self-contained, powerful but usually blunt instrument. 

Paper can be seen as concepts or the intellect – theoretical, perhaps fragile, easily revised – an instrument for exploration and shared meaning. 

Scissors can be seen as relationships or emotion – the intersection of two cutting edges, highly creative in the hands of a skilled user – an instrument that can separate nuance into distinctive pieces.

Each one has a different kind of power, each one has a different vulnerability and each one has an innate quality.  A rock can be used as a sharpening stone for scissors, but it's pretty useless in a conflict against paper.  Scissors can be used as a shaping tool for paper, but they are pretty useless in a conflict against rock.  And paper can be used as a map for placing rocks, but it's pretty useless in a conflict against scissors.

Relationships and feelings (scissors) will come off second best in any conflict of physical power (rock).  As an extreme example, the conflict in Syria can be seen as people expressing a common feeling – a desire for freedom through democracy – as scissors attempting to cut through the existing conceptual framework.  The military is obviously the rock determined to mercilessly crush any expression of such common emotional desires.  And Kofi Annan's peace plan is the paper that, at the moment, is unable to cover the rock or to have any sway over the existing, deeply embossed paper.  The Syrian government says whatever it needs to say to the world in order to continue carrying out the actions it is determined to carry out against its own people.

Nevertheless a rock’s vulnerability is in being covered by a stronger paper.  A stronger paper can only be shaped by better scissors – by the common emotion of a much greater set of relationships.  A similar situation in Libya somehow won the support of a mass of people and therefore a number of countries – stronger scissors shaped a new paper that was able to cover the old, oppressive rock.  It is interesting to wonder why there is not the same groundswell of sentiment for Syria, even though the suffering seems at least as bad.

On a more personal example, do you see yourself primarily as rock, paper, or scissors?  Which do you most often throw in conflict situations?

Does your emotional life (relationships) add quality to your actions (work), or is there a conflict that you might call “work–life balance”?

Are your actions performed in the context of a higher plan or purpose in life, or is there a conflict that you might call “survival”?

And is your higher plan or purpose in life grounded in a higher set of relationships (humanity), or is there a conflict that you might call “narcissism”?

The wheel turns only in one direction – scissors to not have power over equivalent rocks, rocks do not have power over equivalent papers, and papers do not have power over equivalent scissors.  But the greater power in each case can either enhance or destroy the lesser one – it can either “dominate” or be “at the service of”.

A healthy society is one where strong common feeling (scissors) serves to shape legislation (paper) which in turn serves to guide actions (rock) which in turn serve to enhance society as a whole. 

An unhealthy society is one where strong common feeling (scissors) attempts to directly determine actions (rock), or where actions (rock) attempt to directly determine legislation (paper), or where legislation (paper) attempts to directly determine common feeling within society (scissors).

Are your actions often directly motivated by your feelings?  

Is your thinking often directly motivated by your actions? 

Are your feelings often directly motivated by your thinking?

 

That's certainly the order in which we developed, but it is unhealthy to function that way as an adult – it keeps us away from the essential growth process of integration.  It foments our own internal “Syrian struggle” and our own personal crises.

Better to let your feelings serve your thinking, and your thinking serve your actions, and your actions serve your relationships – it seems counter intuitive but it's the only way to create a healthy growth cycle, by breaking the habits that keeps us stuck.

Scissors, paper, rock, scissors, paper, rock, scissors, paper, rock – that’s the way to play a much better game.  It’s called “Integrate your life”!

Will someone please tell Bashar al-Assad…

Or you can check out your own combination of scissors, paper and rock with your very own VitallyMe report, right here on this website…

A Turning Point in the Market?

So you’ve done all that work on yourself – what’s next?  If taking your hard-earned learning out into the world and putting it to good use appeals to you, then read on…

This week’s blog is about discovering the power that lies in a (slightly) higher stage of awareness – where you can look at something in the world that doesn’t seem right – and suddenly make sense of all those contradictory views and arguments that seem to produce a lot more heat than light.

I’d like to start by asking how you ever got into personal development.

People usually look for personal development programs because of a sense that something is lacking in one or more of four perspectives on life.  The first perspective is about Engagement in life – internal processes that determine our experiences of stress, love, passion, meaning, creativity, etc – the stuff of the Turning Point.  The second perspective is about Effectiveness in life – our experiences of quality and equality of relationships, optimism, fun, family, network of friends, etc – the stuff of Mastery & Service.  The third perspective is more about Efficiency in life – making a difference, getting a good income, achieving measurable results, progress towards goals etc – the stuff of Breakthrough.  And the fourth perspective is about Sustainability, about purpose in life – our experience of seeking a secure future, a meaningful bigger picture, making a contribution in society, a sense of continuation etc – the stuff of Life, Death & Purpose. 

Where were your strongest growing experiences – check the course and the life perspective that it primarily addressed.

The interesting thing is that those four perspectives include every possible human experience.  The courses are all history now, but the four perspectives are eternal and universally applicable – to individuals, relationships, organisations, society, business and government.  If you can grasp the essential and distinctive energy of each perspective, then you have the power to see the deeper causes and effects that elude most people.  The key to growth in any entity is in balancing those four perspectives – not in doing more of the same and hoping for a different result.

Balancing these perspectives works like magic, because any under-developed perspective undermines the other three and soon becomes a limitation that won’t go away.  They are like the four legs of a table.  The magic is, that bringing balance doesn’t require much effort – it mostly requires awareness of what is and what isn’t lacking.  Which table leg is short?

Here is one big, broad example drawn from the market economy we live in.  Markets work well when they include 100 or more competing businesses.  A market quickly determines the best value for money and thus rewards Efficiency; it considers the longer-term likelihood of continuing profits and thus rewards Sustainability within that ecosystem; it considers the current sentiment of participants and thus rewards collective optimism (Effectiveness); and finally it considers those who create innovation and those who invest in it, thus rewarding Engagement.  These four elements (the four perspectives) create a natural and healthy balance for evolutionary development and when all four are in balance, optimal growth occurs.  We create various indices to track overall market growth and it's so important that we announce it every night on the news!

Markets are about commercial endeavours, but society as a whole also benefits from a healthy market – innovation (Engagement) creates opportunity and jobs; Efficiency keeps a focus on productivity and measurable progress; Sustainability ensures future employment within that ecosystem; and genuine collective optimism (Effectiveness) means less stress and a better quality of life experience.

I’ll use the banking sector as an example of the effects of perspectives out of balance, and how to discover what’s really going on…

A “four-perspectives diagnostic” would track the symptoms to locate the imbalance. Most obvious is the diminished collective customer sentiment and quality of life with regard to banks – the Effectiveness of customer relationships is generally poor.  Why has that diminished?  Because the banks can’t lose – at the very worst case performance, we bail them out – so Sustainability is very unhealthy!  How did that become so unhealthy?  Because they don’t have to compete to survive – cost of money + overheads + profits + bonuses = fees and interest passed on the customers – so Efficiency is diminished.  How did it become like that?  That would be from lack of innovation – for some reason banks haven’t had to Engage customers.  Why not?  Because as our society became more sophisticated – in today’s world every member of society has to use a bank – the market became “inescapable”. 

So Engagement is the weak quadrant – the perspective that is undermining the other three.  When one of the essential elements is lost, in this case innovation-focussed Engagement, then the natural evolutionary process stalls and the consequent over-focus on investor profit becomes unintegrated – “How can we extract more profit without adding more value for customers?”  The recent history of financial institutions in general attests to this – announcing record profits and raising interest rates in increasingly difficult and uncertain times – and the no-choice public gets a gut feeling that they are being screwed.  How much do you trust the financial institutions that you are forced to deal with, to act in your best interests?  That’s the measure of Effectiveness.

To restore health to that banking ecosystem example is simple in principle – if a market is “inescapable” it must either be regulated or made “escapable”.  For example, set up a government-regulated, not-for-profit, basic banking service with the single objective of maintaining the lowest possible customer fees for essential services.  It might only offer personal savings and home loans tied to RBA rates, and it would leave the hundreds of other non-essential banking products and services to market forces.  A hypothetical example perhaps, but imagine if the general public never had to use the big four commercial banking services for normal daily life. 

Innovation would suddenly spring from the need to Engage customers and a healthy banking ecosystem would be restored very rapidly.

Now, one example may not provide all the tools to equip you to fix the whole world.  But the same principle, combined with a VitallyMe report, can equip you to fix your own world – by discovering your own imbalance on those four perspectives and recommending restorative practices. 

Then you can fix the world ;-)

Argue for your limitations and sure enough – they’ll run the country!

I've always been fascinated by the extent to which our internal, ‘subjective’ experience determines our apparent ‘objective’ perception – especially since I discovered my own!

What we don’t want to accept in ourselves we project ‘out there’ and then proceed to spend our life energy struggling with those projections. 

We can't help but notice those situations that touch our own ‘stuff’, far more often than other things - and we even notice them when they’re hardly there at all!

Nowhere does this seem more evident than in politics.  Perhaps it's because the process of politics takes up so much of our day-to-day environment and thus provides a broad and colourful canvas for our projections.

I have always taken pride in being a ‘swinging voter’ – not being embedded in one ideology or another – even though that actually makes little practical difference, since I reside in a ‘safe’ seat that consequently gets little political attention.

While we each have our own story, we share common areas of projection based on our common human nature.  Broadly those areas of projection are:

• How people should be treated, lit up by personal issues around self-worth
• How things should get done, lit up by personal issues around personal power, and
• How information should be processed, lit up by personal issues around intelligence

Projections around self-worth may cause us to see ourselves and others as victims of uncaring authority figures, and so we see a world filled with struggles against unfairness, injustice and inequality.  We see solutions in upholding people’s inalienable ‘rights’.  So naturally we identify with the underdog, we join unions, and we develop a lean to the left in politics.  At the same time we remain blind to the fact that rights don’t come without responsibilities, that underdogs need to learn about personal power, that unions need to learn responsibility instead of resistance, and that the political left are typically hopeless managers.

Projections around personal power may cause us to see ourselves and others as competitors in a never-ending win-lose battle, and so we see a world filled with the challenges of responsibilities, achievement, independence and personal freedom.  We see solutions in going to war – against poverty, cancer, the evil doers etc.  So naturally we identify with the battler who finally succeeds, we become independent professionals or entrepreneurs or rebels and we develop a lean to the right in politics.  At the same time we remain blind to the fact that ‘war’ is a non-workable analogy, that not everyone started on a level playing field, that independence often comes at the cost of depth in relationship, and that the right in politics are typically arrogant and out of touch with the masses.

Projections around personal intelligence may cause us to see ourselves in a permanent classroom where our report card is constantly on public display, and so we see a world filled with the need to understand, win arguments, fashion ideals and to convince others of the validity of our views.  We see solutions in consensus-based, clear conceptual frameworks.  So naturally we identify with the thinkers who can hold the bigger picture of the future, who can fashion ideals for the whole of society, who can present academically sound, well researched arguments – and if we are pure in that view – we find little on offer in either the right or the left in politics.  So we would have found the Australian Democrats appealing, or perhaps the Greens depending on our deeper projections.  At the same time we remain blind to the fact that most people don’t have ability or interest in higher concepts, and that most decisions are emotionally based, and that in the world of competition the imperative is always on short-term goals over long-term ideals.

Now each of these paradigms produces results that are both positive and negative – none is either good or bad in its own right.  Given even a moment’s thought, it seems obvious that all three paradigms are essential to our common prosperity.

But when one side of politics gets in with a strong margin, they set about implementing everything they see as positive while ignoring their blind spots, to the detriment of the majority.  So at the next opportunity the electorate swings to make up for those deficits and the cycle continues!  Maybe we do get the governments we deserve.

So it might be a good thing, and it's certainly seems inevitable, that over time the difference between political parties must diminish.  That allows the possibility that we could define the best common vision, and implement it with the best managers, for the greatest common good.  In other words it would be inclusive of all views rather than arguing for one at the expense of the others.   

Yet, while a government with a small majority could theoretically be a good thing, instead it seems to become self-destructive when strong egos can't point to the chasm between opposing views.  And instead of a well-managed vision of common prosperity we get arrogant, hopeless leaders with no clue about longer term futures – the worst of each paradigm.

So what I'm asking is that you consider your own projections.  How do you tell the difference between a projection and a considered opinion?  By the amount of energy that you find drives you to justify yourself.  The more energy that comes from you automatically, the more it’s your stuff!  If you consistently vote for the same party then you should consider those projections in even more detail.  

Do you really want a government that offers to protect you from your own unintegrated personality?  Most people do!

Of course the big opportunity here is to discover your own projections and leverage them for your own personal development.  Life without projections is free from those deficit passions, from compulsive responses – a life where you're free to choose emotions, actions and thoughts and where not being involved at all holds the same excitement as arguing for your own limitations.  But then there’s no one to blame!

How to get there?  Naturally we recommend VitallyMe for self-managed development, and its big sister Q12 for coaching with a professional.  We also recommend Narrative Coaching as a professional group, or if you prefer a workshop environment, then we highly recommend Keep Evolving.

Are our collective limitations running the country?  What do you think?

The Illusion of Superannuation

This is one of a series of blogs aimed at raising awareness of the everyday external reality we take for granted (the matrix) and then considering how well it really works for our collective well-being, both short and long-term.  This week the lens is focussed on Superannuation.

Should we save up for our retirement?  Back in the mid-90s Paul Keating decided on our behalf that we should, because projected tax revenues would not be sufficient to fund pensions for the huge numbers of baby boomers approaching retirement age.

Thus launched an industry, drawing most people (including me) into the illusion that it was primarily for our ultimate benefit.  There’s one born every minute and I was sure one of them!  I find investment management, interest rates, the stock market and similar gambling pursuits to be about as exciting as root canal therapy.  So I duly paid out the required amount every year to a large retail fund and got on with life.  Now that I’m eligible to take a lump sum I find that it’s significantly less than the sum of the contributions I made.  I would have been better off putting cash under my mattress than paying into the super fund!

There are currently a number of action groups attempting to garner public persuasion in order to change the law to allow an opt-out from mandatory contributions, but here’s the kicker…  Initial financial discussions determined that the Australian economy would be at risk if citizens were allowed to immediately access and withdraw superannuation. 

Ah-ha!  The matrix is exposed.  The implication is that Superannuation Funds exist to maintain the economy – not for your benefit.  If such action would put the economy at risk then surely that confirms a general belief that our money would be better employed elsewhere.  

In fact if you are in a retail fund it is quite likely that your money would have been better off over the last 14 years in a bank savings account.

“Over the 14 financial years from June 1996 to June 2010, retail funds averaged a return of 3.66% pa.  It is instructive to note that no retail funds rank in the top half of the 130 fund dataset.”

Source: Industry Super Network Report RP1103 September 2011

Let me put it more simply – if your money is in a retail fund you’re being screwed! 

This chart from the same report shows the bottom line on net returns.

 I have selected 11 commonly recognised retail funds from the report to show the spread of results – is your future disintegrating there?

Sample Retail Fund	7 yr rate of return %	Ranking
Perpetual*	5.4	73/130
MLC/NAB/Plum*	4.9	90/130
State Super Retirement Fund	4.8	95/130
Macquarie*	4.7	100/130
ASGARD*	4.5	105/130
BT/Westpac*	4.4	109/130
CFS/Commonwealth*	4.3	112/130
AMP*	4.1	114/130
ING/ANZ*	4.0	117/130
AXA*	3.6	123/130
Suncorp Master Trust	3.1	127/130

* indicates a family of funds
So why do retail funds perform so poorly compared to everything else?  Interestingly the funds are not required to disclose what they make from fees or pay in bonuses. 
The following chart shows that returns grow significantly with the size of the assets invested, which you would expect, due to market forces.  It also compares “for profit” funds (FP) which includes retail funds, with “not for profit” funds (NFP) and shows that the retail funds return between 1.5% and 3% less than NFP funds.  

That margin on one $25 billion fund yields an additional $750 million per year that does not go towards investors’ retirements.  So who is really benefitting from compulsory superannuation?

Over 40 years, $100 invested with a public sector fund would be worth $1150.  The same $100 invested in a retail fund would be worth only $421.

Retail Funds are screwing you!  If your money is in a retail fund, I hope that it is not part of your retirement plans…

Now we are fully entitled to be ripped off by any scheme we choose – that’s our right as citizens – the problem is that with mandatory superannuation there is no choice.  It’s compulsory to be part of the matrix. 

The real choice is obvious – root canal therapy is preferable to retail funds!  Thanks Mr Keating for forcing us to fund organisations that grow the economy and ensure their own futures!  

Oh, and welcome to the matrix!

What’s your experience?