約翰塔夫脫的天氣論: 氣候影響商業

Three years ago, John Taft, a senior Canadian banker, wrote a thought-provoking book about finance. Stewardship appealed to bankers to stop thinking of themselves as “speculators” and start acting like “stewards”. They needed, Taft argued, to take a more collectivist approach, focusing on the collective good rather than acting as short-term, profit-maximising individualists.

三年前，加拿大資深銀行家約翰•塔夫脫(John Taft)寫了一本關於金融的發人深省的著作。財產管理者的職責要求銀行家們不能再把自己看作“投機者”，而應開始拿出個“管家”的樣子。塔夫脫認爲，他們需要採用更像個集體主義者的方式，專注於集體利益，而不是表現得像個目光短淺、追求利潤最大化的個人主義者。

It was an eminently sensible piece of advice. But what really grabbed my attention was not what Taft said about profits but what he said about the weather. Halfway through his book, he inserted a sidebar citing research that suggests the brutal extremes of Canada’s winters fostered a pragmatic, collegiate spirit in earlier generations of Canadian society. Nobody can afford to be an egomaniac when it is -40C on the prairie — not if they plan to survive.

這是一條非常明智的忠告。但真正吸引我注意的，不是塔夫脫關於利潤的高見，而是他的天氣論。他在這本書的中間部分附帶援引了一項研究，該研究認爲正是加拿大冬季殘酷的極寒天氣，培養了前幾代加拿大人務實的、集體主義的精神。在零下40攝氏度的北美大草原上，沒人敢當極端利己主義者——只要他們打算活下來。

And that climate-induced social history influenced the modern corporate culture, Taft suggests, making Canadian banks more imbued with a pragmatic, collective spirit than those of, say, Wall Street. Lots of snow helped to promote a focus on stakeholders — or so the argument went.

塔夫脫認爲，受到氣候影響的社會歷史還影響了現代企業文化，令加拿大的銀行比其他地方的銀行——比如華爾街——更務實的、更有集體主義精神。紛飛的大雪有助於促使他們把精力集中在利益相關者身上——至少塔夫脫是這麼認爲的。

Many bankers might scoff at this. Canadian banks and their regulators have certainly performed well during the past decade, demonstrating a much more prudent approach to the credit bubble and bust than many of their Wall Street peers. But that reputation could soon be tested again, given that Canada is now suffering from falling oil prices and a relatively high level of mortgage debt.

許多銀行家可能會對此嗤之以鼻。過去十年間，加拿大銀行及其監管機構的確表現良好，比起許多華爾街同行，他們在信貸泡沫和信貸危機面前展現了更審慎的態度。但鑑於加拿大現在正受困於油價下跌，以及抵押貸款債務處於相對較高水平，這一良好聲譽可能很快就將再次受到考驗。

Leaving aside that caveat, the question of how climate affects our cultural patterns is an issue that is worth pondering — particularly in North America. Where I live in Manhattan, life has recently been a seemingly endless blur of snow and record-breaking low temperatures. Last month, for example, my daughters and I went skiing in Massachusetts and discovered — to my horror — that the temperature was -25C (or -35C with wind-chill); apparently, this is only slightly warmer than the North Pole. Manhattan has felt almost as frigid. Meanwhile, in Boston people are grappling with 10ft-high snowdrifts, a frozen transit system and the constant danger of falling icicles. Unsurprisingly, the first 10 minutes of every local news report is devoted to the weather.

撇開這一警告不談，氣候如何影響了我們的文化形態，這是個值得深思的問題，尤其在北美地區。在我所居住的曼哈頓，近來的生活彷彿只剩下無休無止的茫茫大雪，以及破紀錄的低溫。比如2月份的時候，我和女兒去馬薩諸塞州滑雪，我驚恐地發現，這裏的溫度爲零下25攝氏度（颳風時達到零下35攝氏度），貌似只比北極暖和一點點。曼哈頓也好不了多少。與此同時，波士頓人正努力對付10英尺高的雪堆，“凍僵”了的交通系統，以及無時不在的冰柱墜落的危險。不出所料，每個地方新聞節目的前10分鐘都在說天氣。

However, last month I also visited San Francisco, where it was 21C, with clear blue skies. To local residents, that was unremarkable. But I was so grateful for the peaceful, balmy warmth that I felt like a refugee from a war: between meetings, I spent time standing in the streets, basking in the sun. Indeed, it felt so utterly exhilarating that I held many of my meetings outdoors, strolling around in the warmth with various venture capitalists and tech luminaries. (As the philosopher Frédéric Gros observed last year in his best-selling A Philosophy of Walking, walking is not just great for solitary inspiration but also a fabulous technique for talk.)

可我2月份還去了舊金山，當時那裏的氣溫爲21攝氏度，碧空如洗。在當地人看來這沒什麼特別的。但我卻由衷感激這種安寧而宜人的溫暖，它讓我覺得自己像一個從戰區逃來的難民。會議間隙，我就站在大街上曬太陽。事實上，這裏的天氣令我感到無比振奮，我將許多會議都挪到了室外舉行，與衆多風險投資家和科技界名人漫步在融融暖意中。（正如哲學家弗裏德里克•格羅(Frédéric Gros)在其去年出版的暢銷書《散步的哲學》(A Philosophy of Walking)中所說，散步不僅對獨自尋找靈感大有裨益，也非常有助於促進交談。）

As I swung between temperatures, I noticed that the climate does not just affect individual moods, it subtly affects social interactions too. Cold weather makes people hunched and wary, in every sense (psychologists at Yale University have discovered that if you hold something cold before you shake somebody’s hand in an office meeting, they will feel more antipathy towards you than if you clutch a hot coffee). Cold reduces spontaneity, and forces everyone to plan, in a conservative way. But it also, as Taft observes, forces a more collective spirit: snow makes people huddle together, defensively.

當我穿梭於不同氣溫的區域之間時，我注意到氣候不僅會影響個人情緒，它還會潛移默化地影響人們的社交。寒冷的天氣令人們縮成一團，在所有方面都非常謹慎（耶魯大學(Yale University)心理學家發現，與剛剛握過一杯熱咖啡相比，如果你剛剛拿過涼的東西，你在辦公會議上與人握手時，別人對你的好感度會比較低）。寒冷讓人們不那麼率性而爲，還迫使每個人以一種保守的方式去做計劃。但就像塔夫脫所注意到的，寒冷也迫使人們更具有集體主義精神，大雪令人們以防禦的姿態抱成一團。

Heat is different. Excessively hot weather can dull the spirits or inflame moods; a study by the Chicago police a few years ago, for example, showed that sudden upward swings in temperature are usually associated with higher murder rates. But moderate warmth enables more spontaneity and independence. At 21C, your thoughts — and feet — can wander freely. Sunshine alone did not create the experimental Silicon Valley spirit but it undoubtedly helped. It is hard to imagine Steve Jobs brainstorming during a blizzard.

炎熱則會產生不同的效果。過於炎熱的天氣會讓人提不起精神，或變得易爆易怒。舉個例子，幾年前芝加哥警察局的一項研究現實，氣溫突然上升通常與較高的謀殺率相關聯。但暖和的天氣會讓人更加率性、更加獨立。在21攝氏度的氣溫裏，你的思想和雙腳，都能夠自由徜徉。陽光本身創造不出敢於嘗試的硅谷精神，但它無疑起到了幫助作用。很難想象史蒂夫•喬布斯(Steve Jobs)在一場暴風雪裏，還能來一次頭腦風暴。

Of course, there are numerous exceptions. Finland has a tech industry too. But if any aspiring finance student is looking for a research topic, it would be fascinating to take Taft’s thesis and map it out in a broader sense across the corporate and financial world. We might like to think that we live in a cyber age, when we shape our universe and society with smartphones; but we are also animals, subtly influenced by our physical environment, for better and worse. If nothing else, winter should remind us of that simple, oft-forgotten point. Not least because it also makes us doubly grateful for the joys of spring.

當然，例外的情況也不少。比如芬蘭也有高科技產業。但假如有哪位志向遠大的金融專業學生正在尋找研究課題，可以選擇塔夫脫的理論，將其推廣到整個企業界和金融界來具體研究一番——這會是篇有趣的論文。當我們用智能手機塑造我們的宇宙和社會時，我們或許願意認爲，我們生活在一個網絡時代；但我們也有動物性，會受到自然環境潛移默化地影響，不管這種影響是好還是壞。至少，冬季應該是個提醒，讓我們想起這一簡單的、經常被我們忽視的常識，一個重要的理由是，因爲冬季還令我們加倍感激春天帶來的各種歡樂。