约翰塔夫脱的天气论: 气候影响商业

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，加拿大资深银行家约翰•塔夫脱(John Taft)写了一本关于金融的发人深省的著作。财产管理者的职责要求银行家们不能再把自己看作“投机者”，而应开始拿出个“管家”的样子。塔夫脱认为，他们需要采用更像个集体主义者的方式，专注于集体利益，而不是表现得像个目光短浅、追求利润最大化的个人主义者。

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.

这是一条非常明智的忠告。但真正吸引我注意的，不是塔夫脱关于利润的高见，而是他的天气论。他在这本书的中间部分附带援引了一项研究，该研究认为正是加拿大冬季残酷的极寒天气，培养了前几代加拿大人务实的、集体主义的精神。在零下40摄氏度的北美大草原上，没人敢当极端利己主义者——只要他们打算活下来。

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.

塔夫脱认为，受到气候影响的社会历史还影响了现代企业文化，令加拿大的银行比其他地方的银行——比如华尔街——更务实的、更有集体主义精神。纷飞的大雪有助于促使他们把精力集中在利益相关者身上——至少塔夫脱是这么认为的。

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.

许多银行家可能会对此嗤之以鼻。过去十年间，加拿大银行及其监管机构的确表现良好，比起许多华尔街同行，他们在信贷泡沫和信贷危机面前展现了更审慎的态度。但鉴于加拿大现在正受困于油价下跌，以及抵押贷款债务处于相对较高水平，这一良好声誉可能很快就将再次受到考验。

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.

撇开这一警告不谈，气候如何影响了我们的文化形态，这是个值得深思的问题，尤其在北美地区。在我所居住的曼哈顿，近来的生活仿佛只剩下无休无止的茫茫大雪，以及破纪录的低温。比如2月份的时候，我和女儿去马萨诸塞州滑雪，我惊恐地发现，这里的温度为零下25摄氏度（刮风时达到零下35摄氏度），貌似只比北极暖和一点点。曼哈顿也好不了多少。与此同时，波士顿人正努力对付10英尺高的雪堆，“冻僵”了的交通系统，以及无时不在的冰柱坠落的危险。不出所料，每个地方新闻节目的前10分钟都在说天气。

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月份还去了旧金山，当时那里的气温为21摄氏度，碧空如洗。在当地人看来这没什么特别的。但我却由衷感激这种安宁而宜人的温暖，它让我觉得自己像一个从战区逃来的难民。会议间隙，我就站在大街上晒太阳。事实上，这里的天气令我感到无比振奋，我将许多会议都挪到了室外举行，与众多风险投资家和科技界名人漫步在融融暖意中。（正如哲学家弗里德里克•格罗(Frédéric Gros)在其去年出版的畅销书《散步的哲学》(A Philosophy of Walking)中所说，散步不仅对独自寻找灵感大有裨益，也非常有助于促进交谈。）

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.

当我穿梭于不同气温的区域之间时，我注意到气候不仅会影响个人情绪，它还会潜移默化地影响人们的社交。寒冷的天气令人们缩成一团，在所有方面都非常谨慎（耶鲁大学(Yale University)心理学家发现，与刚刚握过一杯热咖啡相比，如果你刚刚拿过凉的东西，你在办公会议上与人握手时，别人对你的好感度会比较低）。寒冷让人们不那么率性而为，还迫使每个人以一种保守的方式去做计划。但就像塔夫脱所注意到的，寒冷也迫使人们更具有集体主义精神，大雪令人们以防御的姿态抱成一团。

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.

炎热则会产生不同的效果。过于炎热的天气会让人提不起精神，或变得易爆易怒。举个例子，几年前芝加哥警察局的一项研究现实，气温突然上升通常与较高的谋杀率相关联。但暖和的天气会让人更加率性、更加独立。在21摄氏度的气温里，你的思想和双脚，都能够自由徜徉。阳光本身创造不出敢于尝试的硅谷精神，但它无疑起到了帮助作用。很难想象史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)在一场暴风雪里，还能来一次头脑风暴。

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.

当然，例外的情况也不少。比如芬兰也有高科技产业。但假如有哪位志向远大的金融专业学生正在寻找研究课题，可以选择塔夫脱的理论，将其推广到整个企业界和金融界来具体研究一番——这会是篇有趣的论文。当我们用智能手机塑造我们的宇宙和社会时，我们或许愿意认为，我们生活在一个网络时代；但我们也有动物性，会受到自然环境潜移默化地影响，不管这种影响是好还是坏。至少，冬季应该是个提醒，让我们想起这一简单的、经常被我们忽视的常识，一个重要的理由是，因为冬季还令我们加倍感激春天带来的各种欢乐。