THAT'S MEN:Recovery depends on our feel-good factors, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
GILLIAN BOWLER suggested on the radio recently that some of the responsibility for the madness of the boom lay with testosterone. I thought her remark significant because such factors are routinely ignored in discussions on business, economics and politics.
Men are more testosterone driven than women, so I guess she was blaming the male of the species for our woes. I’d like to say this is self-serving nonsense from a woman who is, herself, a financial mover and shaker as chairwoman of Irish Life and Permanent. Trouble is, there’s something in what she says.
I’ve just finished reading Simon Kelly’s book Breakfast with Anglo, a developer’s-eye view of the boom, bubble and bust. He takes us all the way through the Irish boom with its madness and mega-deals to the slow realisation that everything had died.
I was particularly interested to see how very rarely women figured in the story. It’s almost exclusively the story of men talking to men, selling deals to men, men slapping men on the back and then moving on to the next big idea. The world, as described by Simon Kelly, is a man’s world.
In this world, men met and made plans that could only succeed, if by succeed you mean making lots and lots of money and owning lots and lots of property – and that’s a definition of success most of us are happy to go along with.
Such success must have brought surges of euphoria. And research, let alone life experience, tells us that euphoria makes people less good at assessing risk. Ever see a bunch of schoolkids on the road, maybe outside a school, in a state of euphoria? If you’re driving along you take extra care because neither you nor they can tell what they are going to do next.
Transfer that euphoria to adult men backed by money and vast amounts of credit and you can see how the ability to assess risk went out the window.
Add to this also the research which shows that testosterone surges in dealers when their deals succeed and makes them more willing to take risk. When deals fail, testosterone falls too, and along with it the appetite for risk taking.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not for a moment discounting the role of greed in what happened to the Irish economy. Neither am I discounting the unthinking pursuit of possessions, which seems to characterise the human condition.
But nor should we discount the role played by hormones and chemicals in our behaviour. Two examples from outside the world of economics: women are at their most sexually attractive to men when they are at the most fertile stage of their cycle. Neither they nor men necessarily know this is going on: it’s all beneath the hood, so to speak. Women’s flood of love for their newborn babies is boosted by a flood of oxytocin in their systems.
What this all means is that when we talk of a return of confidence, we are talking partly about a surge of testosterone and other feel-good chemicals designed by mother nature – the original drug dealer.
What we don’t know is what will bring about that surge – but when it comes we’re off again – and until it comes we’re stuck.
Back in 2002, iodine tablets were distributed to every household in the State for use in case of a nuclear incident. The exercise caused great hilarity to the public, most of whom still have them at the back of the medicine press awaiting Armageddon.
So here’s my suggestion for the revival of the Irish economy: let the government – whoever they may be – give some shiny junior minister the job of sending testosterone tables to everyone in the State. On a designated day we will all swallow our testosterone and immediately the recovery will begin.
Am I joking? I am, but not as much as you may think. Gillian knows what I mean.
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail