I
must admit I am rather surprised how much I actually enjoyed the book
The Constant Choice by Peter Georgescu. At first sight, this
book seemed not for me: Another book filled with strong
anti-communist messages and resentment by a CEO and chairman emeritus
of Young & Rubicam Inc. who was probably going to extol the
fairy-tale virtues of the American dream.
This
is a memoir written by a successful and retiring CEO, and what would
they know about pain and suffering, what knowledge could they
possibly have about the existence of evil, and also why should we
care about what they think in the first place. It might be
simply a work of contrition to purge their own evil ways and to
unload their heavy burden of conscience.
On
a literary level, the book is somewhat uneven. It mixes facts with
ideas and switches between recording and sharing life experiences and
Georgescu's own present observations and thoughts on the main events
and decisions surrounding his life. At times it feels like fiction as
he often jump-cuts from the present to his difficult past in a
forced labor camp in Romania.
However,
I am not holding its literary and at times philosophical demerits
against this work. It is indeed a book written not by a professional
writer, scholar or philosopher but foremost an honest and goodhearted
human who wants to share his life story, ideas and observations. His
philosophy of choosing and doing good may be simple, but it is
effective and often overlooked in daily life. Georgescu may not have
studied philosophy extensively, but his acute observations and his
general knowledge offer enough satisfying food for thought.
More
importantly (and somewhat unexpectedly) here is someone with whom I
fully agree, well let's say about 87.5% of the time. His ideas are
in very close vicinity to my own views and perceptions of life,
religion and philosophy. For instance, Georgescu believes in a
higher power (let's call it God) but this entity is not hindered by
restrictions and limitations generally set upon it by organized
religion. In other words, God is not enslaved by the
narrow-minded dogmas of those who officially profess to know Him well.
Throughout
his life, Georgescu has had to adjust his own beliefs ranging from a
fairy-tale-version of God that comes to the rescue of the good and
suffering people on Earth, Jesus at its helm slaying dragons with his
sword, to a belief that God and with it all existence on the planet
is much more complex and intricate than that. However, with
irrational fervor somewhat reminiscent of Pascal and Kierkegaard,
he still holds onto the existence of God against all
(scientifically) visible odds of the universe.
But
life has given him some hints of the other world. It happened
when the Gypsy fortune-teller against all logical odds predicted the
exact release date of his imprisoned father in Romania. It also
happened to him during meditation sessions following the Silva
technique (a technique I am curious about but need to brush upon
myself before making any comments on it) where he had a glimpse of
knowledge outside of the self and the realm of personal experience.
Put differently, Georgescu has had visions that do not concord with
logic.
Some
people may dismiss them as fantasy, inaccurate recollection or
what-have-you. Those people are stubbornly fighting against a view
that is not congruent with their rational construction of the world in
which irrational happenings are seen as a virus or a termite that can
make their whole artifact collapse onto itself.
But
such bugs and glitches exist already in science when it comes to
seemingly preposterous ideas of quantum physics involving cats that
are both dead and alive, electrons that are both waves and particles,
or more astoundingly the mind-boggling string theory that involves
multiple dimensions folded upon each other.
In
either case, such an existence of other dimensions to our existence
cannot be comprehended by logic alone; it needs the basis of
experience, and I must say I fully believe and support Georgescu's
account of the existence and occurrence of such supernatural
phenomena.
Apart
from our general religious and spiritual overlap, Georgescu is
equally naive as me (though I dare say not wrong) in his view of the
world. We both think that there is ultimate justice (call it divine
or poetic) and that the best philosophy is to be and do simply good.
These good and constant choices add up over time and may even change
the genetics of the person in question, an idea that the author
explores to some extent under the scientific banner of epigenetics.
Whenever
people act with malice or evil intentions, we feel disappointed. Why
people would not embrace the good and let their greed or ambition get
in the way seems baffling. To me it does seem an oxymoron to have a
morally “good” CEO, but it seems that he has achieved his
position through a balanced mix of luck, hard work and
well-intentioned, caring and supporting people, to whom he refers as
his guardian angels on Earth.
Georgescu
does not strike me as a ruthless person, but as someone who has an
interminable work ethic and an insatiable drive for success and
perfection. Yes, he strikes me as ambitious (and there is nothing
wrong with that); at the same time, he is modest since there is
little bragging on his side concerning his position, status and
power.
Nonetheless,
I am somewhat surprised how someone with his sensitivity should
survive so long and successfully in the cut-and-throat business world
of advertising. It must be said that it has taken a toll on his
health, in terms of stomach ulcers and sleepless nights. However, he
is fueled by his childhood and later life experiences.
In forced
labor camp, work was equated with life and death (much more so since
apart from being physically demanding, it also entailed elements of
life-threatening danger when he would work with dangerously wired
switches in Communist Romania). Later, he felt gratitude for his host
country, the United States and felt compelled to work hard and prove
himself worthy and of value in this land of opportunities.
But
throughout it should not be forgotten that he originally came from a
privileged and respected family back home. This also explains the
wrath and envy of the Communists and them taking it out on Georgescu
and his brother, while the parents had left the country and were
working abroad in an oil company in the United States.
At
this point, Georgescu makes two philosophical assumptions I disagree
with. First, he claims that actions although undertaken with good
actions can be bad. Case in point are his grandparents who insist
that he and his brother should stay back with them in Romania instead
of joining their parents.
It
is true that it was the wrong decision, but I think that intention
regardless of outcome defines morality. If we look at the morality of
consequences of actions alone, we might accept the dangerous
Machiavellian concept of means justifying the end. To blame the
grandparents for their love may be a case of selfishness, but it is not
a moral issue here.
The
second point is when it comes to Georgescu's parents. They are
professed as good and caring, but in my view they are not. When their
children were suffering in Romania, they supposedly spent a lot of
money to get them out of there, but they never went there in fear for
their own safety. Yet when the communists contacted his father with a
proposition that they would free his children if he agreed to spy for
them, he, and it seems without hesitation, rejected
the proposal.
Here
we have a conflict of morals, treason of a country versus the safety
of his children. Georgescu extols his father for making the right
choice. But as a father myself, I could not disagree with him more on
the matter. I believe to potentially sacrifice your own children for
the abstract sake of a country that is not even yours is inherently
wrong. In fact, shortly after they are united, brought upon by press
and diplomatic pressure from the US (again underscoring the important
weight and position of this family), his father sends him to a
boarding school.
This
kind of relationship is an issue with Georgescu himself and his own
children. As a father, he follows into the same footsteps or rather
pitfalls as his own father, and his priorities are skewed. One must
indeed make personal sacrifices to be successful in the world of
business, and all of this comes at the expense of family. It is an
unfair price to trade family happiness with money and success.
Yet
it is something that Georgescu himself does not embellish or gloss
over; he acknowledges and realizes his own shortcomings and tries his
best to rectify them. Based on his own upbringing, he used to believe
that a child needs to earn the love of his parents, but now he
realizes that it is unconditional love that makes one a parent and
that if you do not have or cannot offer that, you should not have
children in the first place. This type of epiphany may have been
another, more personal reason for writing this book.
So
all in all, I enjoyed this book because it gives us a personal and
honest glimpse of an interesting life. It inspires me and makes me
think that maybe I should finish off my own memoirs, which are
half-written and abandoned somewhere in a dusty attic of my computer
files. It was also reassuring to know that there are people even in
the higher echelons of the business world that are good and care
about moral issues and that are ready to share their ideas in the
form of such an entertaining and enlightening book.
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