Bringing a "Whole New Mind" to the BP Oil Catastrophe

I picked up and couldn't stop
reading, author Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainer's
Will Rule the Future, because I reside with three of his so-called "R(ight
brain)-directed" thinkers, and as a scientist I've lived most of my
professional life in a "L(eft brain)-directed" world. So, though I was
motivated by personal reasons to entertain Pink's hypothesis, I was surprised
to find currency in his book for two domains that preoccupy me: Buddhism and
earth science. Pink, a former speechwriter for Al Gore argues that we now live
in the dawning of the "Conceptual Age"-that which has succeeded the information
and industrial ages respectively-and the skills necessary for survival in this
age are, roughly put, art and heart.

Pink draws on functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) data, well-known to Buddhists interested in
neuroscience, that show how the left and right hemispheres divide their labor:
the left hemisphere handles logic, sequence, literalness and analysis while the
right hemisphere processes and synthesizes emotional expression, metaphor,
context, and "the big picture". R-directed talents including artistry, empathy, taking the long view, and
pursuing the transcendent that were undervalued during the information age, are
now essential. Pink asserts that the requisite abilities-he characterizes them
as "Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning"-are fundamentally human
attributes, things we do out of a sense of intrinsic motivation, that reside in
all of us and need only be nurtured into being.

In the chapter "Meaning", Pink
refers to the Dalai
Lama's comment at a Mind and Life Institute press conference: ""Science
and Buddhism are very similar," he said, "because they are exploring
the nature of reality, and both have the goal to lessen the suffering of
mankind." Pink aims to urge the importance in the Conceptual Age of taking
spirituality seriously. He offers up examples of ways of doing so-medical
schools that teach their students to take "spiritual histories" of patients;
village greens, prisons, universities, and hospitals with incorporated
labyrinths; employees who articulate hunger for bringing spiritual
values-meaning and purpose-to their workplaces as documented in a University of
Southern California business school report A Spiritual Audit of
Corporate America.

I bring up spiritual values and
business because BP replaced Tony Hayward, the company CEO who presided over attempts
to cap the Gulf of Mexico deep sea oil gusher, with a new CEO, Bob
Dudley, who says he will put safety at the center of future exploration.
Dudley spoke of the need to restructure and reorganize in order to advance this
goal. But safety
is a value-a deeply held belief that is beyond compromise; if my reading of
Pink is on target, BP's new CEO, and other oil professionals are going to have
to enlist "whole minds" to embrace truly safety as a value. Robots run by
computers, inventions of the information age, have worked to cap the well but
it took months. Many reasons explain the absence of a fast fix, among them the
fact that robots and computers can feel no empathy, don't see "the big picture",
can't handle context, and don't work creatively; and approaches to the calamity
sprang primarily from L-directed thinking of oil professionals-logic, sequence,
and analysis.

If BP enlisted R-directed thinkers
and what Pink calls their "high concept-high touch" abilities-emotional
intelligence, imagination and creativity-could the company (and others like
it), move "Beyond
Petroleum", its one-time marketing brand? In The New
Division of Labor: How Computers are Creating the Next Job Market,
economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane write that the future belongs to
people who excel at expert thinking-solving problems for which there are no
rules-based solutions - and complex communication-persuading, explaining, and
conveying information. The solution to the BP disaster and others that will be
forthcoming is not a new design for
deepwater drilling. Rather we need imaginative, emotionally intelligent,
R-directed professionals working alongside L-directed professionals in the oil
industry. But that's not all. And in order to make the point I'll refer to the myth of Pandora, a
story I've
previously found useful in connection with the Gulf of Mexico oil
catastrophe.

According to the legend, Pandora
opened her jar - a gift from Zeus-and the evil it contained escaped and spread
over the earth. Pandora hurried to close the lid, but the entire contents of
the jar had escaped, except for hope. I'd like to argue that the analogous gift
that Pandora's well might still release is human valuing of right hemisphere
brain functions-synthesis, emotional expression, metaphor, and context; if so, with
regard to human use of fossil fuels, we have the possibility of acting on "the
big picture" with a whole, new mind.