# Masterly Inactivity Versus Micromanaging

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 23 Apr 2021, 32 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/ed1c7958-6889-4b14-8221-ae39003ad739/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Lady Sale (played by Helena Bonham Carter) was part of a bloody and ignominious British retreat from Afghanistan in 1842. The arrogant colonial invaders had thought intervening in Afghan affairs and dominating the country would be easy - they were wrong. Lady Sale was among the lucky few to escape with her life. Wiser heads later recommended "masterly inactivity" as a better course of action. In politics, parenting and even medicine - avoiding the temptation to act is a sadly neglected art form. Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/ Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. Lady Sale was eating her last breakfast in Carbal, Afghanistan.
[0:31] Speaker 1: She'd had to burn the legs of her mahogany dining
[0:33] Speaker 1: table to cook it. That was her last remaining wood.
[0:36] Speaker 1: There wasn't much food either, but it would have to do.
[0:41] Speaker 1: The year was eighteen forty two, the sixth of January,
[0:45] Speaker 1: not the best time of year to embark on a
[0:47] Speaker 1: five day trek through the mountains. The cold was bitter,
[0:52] Speaker 1: the snow knee high. Shortly after nine in the morning,
[0:57] Speaker 1: they set out. Hundreds of British and many thousands of
[1:00] Speaker 1: Indians recruited from an India that was under British control.
[1:05] Speaker 1: There were sea pois or soldiers, and the camp followers, civilians,
[1:10] Speaker 1: wives and children. The British lead troops had occupied Afghanistan
[1:15] Speaker 1: for three years. It had been clear for weeks now
[1:18] Speaker 1: that they'd had to leave their base in Carbal. It
[1:21] Speaker 1: still wasn't clear if they'd get out alive. They'd been
[1:25] Speaker 1: trying to negotiate with the various Afghan rebels who surrounded them,
[1:29] Speaker 1: both for the safe passage to the British held fort
[1:32] Speaker 1: at Jalalabad and to buy the food they so desperately needed.
[1:37] Speaker 1: The soldiers were on half rations. There was nothing at
[1:40] Speaker 1: all for the animals. The cattle chewed the bark off trees,
[1:44] Speaker 1: wrote Lady Sale in her journal, I have seen my
[1:48] Speaker 1: own riding horse snall voraciously at a cartwheel. Lady Sale's
[1:54] Speaker 1: son in law had spent the previous night waist deep
[1:58] Speaker 1: in the icy Carbal River constructing a makeshift bridge for
[2:02] Speaker 1: the convoy. This must have been a galling task because
[2:06] Speaker 1: he'd repeatedly told his superiors that the river could easily
[2:10] Speaker 1: be forded upstream, and they told him built the bridge anyway.
[2:15] Speaker 1: As usual, every sensible proposition was overruled. Trying to get
[2:20] Speaker 1: almost twenty thousand people plus pack animals across rickety planks
[2:26] Speaker 1: between icy river banks proved slow going. As the day
[2:30] Speaker 1: dragged on, a long line of baggage carriers backed up
[2:34] Speaker 1: at the bridge. The rebels started to shoot at them.
[2:38] Speaker 1: They abandoned the baggage, and so as night fell, the
[2:44] Speaker 1: convoy had managed to cover just six miles and lose
[2:48] Speaker 1: most of their supplies. One of the few tents that
[2:51] Speaker 1: had made it through was chivalrously pitched over. Lady Sale,
[2:56] Speaker 1: her pregnant daughter, and her exhausted son in law at daylight,
[3:02] Speaker 1: we found several men frozen to death, hungry and frostbitten.
[3:08] Speaker 1: The survivor as trudged on straight into a carefully planned ambush.
[3:17] Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford. You're listening to cautionary tales. We'll come
[3:45] Speaker 1: back to the story of Lady Sale and why the
[3:48] Speaker 1: bedraggled Imperial convoy was fleeing Carbal First, I want to
[3:53] Speaker 1: talk about something that may seem quite unrelated. Helicopter parenting,
[3:58] Speaker 1: dropping in to micro manage your child's life. The practice
[4:03] Speaker 1: is much mocked, but it's also widespread. Some evidence suggests
[4:08] Speaker 1: that it's not a good idea. In twenty thirteen, for example,
[4:12] Speaker 1: researchers from the University of Mary Washington in Virginia asked
[4:17] Speaker 1: college students to say whether or not they agreed with
[4:20] Speaker 1: statements such as my mother monitors my exercise schedule, or
[4:25] Speaker 1: if I'm having an issue with my roommate, my mother
[4:28] Speaker 1: would try to intervene. The more their parents were like helicopters,
[4:33] Speaker 1: constantly hovering over their child's life, the more likely the
[4:37] Speaker 1: students were to be depressed and dissatisfied. Criticism of helicopter
[4:42] Speaker 1: parenting goes back to long before the invention of the helicopter.
[4:46] Speaker 1: Charlotte Mason was a Welsh educator in the late eighteen hundreds.
[4:51] Speaker 1: Her writings are still studied today, especially by homeschoolers. Mason
[4:57] Speaker 1: chastised parents who think they have to organize every moment
[5:01] Speaker 1: of their children's lives. Fussy and restless, she called them.
[5:06] Speaker 1: Let them choose their own friends, Mason and said, and
[5:10] Speaker 1: form their own opinions and spend their own pocket money.
[5:14] Speaker 1: Don't repeatedly remind them to do the things you've asked
[5:17] Speaker 1: them to do. Instead, let them choose to fail to
[5:20] Speaker 1: do those things, as long as you then make them
[5:22] Speaker 1: suffer the consequences. When Charlotte Mason wanted a memorable phrase
[5:29] Speaker 1: to sum up this approach, she reached for one that
[5:32] Speaker 1: had suddenly become popular in the British discourse of the
[5:35] Speaker 1: eighteen sixties. I wish to bring before parents and teachers
[5:40] Speaker 1: the subject of masterly inactivity. Masterly inactivity. It's a lovely
[5:47] Speaker 1: phrase and a surprisingly useful concept. As we'll see, Afghanistan
[5:58] Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties was not an easy place to rule.
[6:03] Speaker 1: Pushte hartepe yek padishah nishast Behind every hill, Look there
[6:10] Speaker 1: sits an emperor, so many competing tribal leaders had to
[6:15] Speaker 1: be kept happy or at least quiescent. But Dost Mohammad
[6:20] Speaker 1: Khan was proving remarkably adept at it. He was also,
[6:24] Speaker 1: or so he thought, on friendly terms with Britain, the
[6:28] Speaker 1: colonial power that in effect governed neighboring India through the
[6:32] Speaker 1: British East India Company. At any rate, Dost Mohammad had
[6:36] Speaker 1: hit it off with Britton's man in Carbal, the charming
[6:40] Speaker 1: and brilliant Scotsman, thirty four year old Alexander Burns. Carbal
[6:45] Speaker 1: was thriving. Its Grand Bazaar was the commercial hub of
[6:49] Speaker 1: Central Asia. You could buy anything from spices to silk,
[6:52] Speaker 1: furs to fine porcelain. Carbal was diverse. Traders from Hindu
[6:57] Speaker 1: and Jewish minorities felt welcome and secure. Alexander Burns was
[7:02] Speaker 1: impressed by how skillfully Dost Mohammad was running the country.
[7:06] Speaker 1: The peasant rejoices at the absence of tyranny, the citizen
[7:10] Speaker 1: at the safety of his home, the merchant at the
[7:13] Speaker 1: equity of the decisions and the protection of his property,
[7:16] Speaker 1: and the soldier at the regular manner in which his
[7:19] Speaker 1: arrears are discharged. A man and power can have no
[7:22] Speaker 1: higher priest. So imagine the outrage when Afghans learned that
[7:28] Speaker 1: Britain was invading their land to oust Dost Muhammad and
[7:33] Speaker 1: Alexander Burns was riding with the invading troops. Burns was
[7:39] Speaker 1: cast as Namakhram, a traitor literally impure salt. In the
[7:46] Speaker 1: histories told by Afghan poets, Burns does not come out
[7:50] Speaker 1: well on the outside. He seems a man, but inside
[7:56] Speaker 1: he is the very devil. To be fair to Burns,
[8:00] Speaker 1: he had tried. Russia was trying to muscle in on
[8:04] Speaker 1: Central Asia, threatening Britain's influence in the region. Burns repeatedly
[8:09] Speaker 1: begged his political masters leave this to me. I can
[8:13] Speaker 1: handle it. Let me work with Dost Mohammad. But all
[8:17] Speaker 1: of Burns's charm and brilliance couldn't make up for his
[8:21] Speaker 1: unforgivable youth. Who was this upstart questioning the received wisdom
[8:26] Speaker 1: of Britain's most senior experts on Afghan affairs, Those senior
[8:32] Speaker 1: experts had admittedly never actually been to Afghanistan. Still, they
[8:38] Speaker 1: were sure they knew exactly what the Afghan people wanted,
[8:42] Speaker 1: the reinstatement of their former king, who had been deposed
[8:45] Speaker 1: by relatives of Dost Mohammad some three decades earlier, and
[8:49] Speaker 1: had since been living in exile as a guest of
[8:53] Speaker 1: the British East India Company. From their far away desks,
[8:58] Speaker 1: the experts hatched a dramatic plan to deal with the
[9:01] Speaker 1: Russian threat dead invade Afghanistan to put the former king
[9:05] Speaker 1: back on the throne, where he'd rule gratefully in Britain's interests.
[9:13] Speaker 1: The story of the eighteen thirty nine invasion is told
[9:17] Speaker 1: in William Dalrymple's masterful book Return of a King. As
[9:21] Speaker 1: the British and Indian army marched through Afghanistan, it dawned
[9:26] Speaker 1: on the senior officers that Afghans had not, after all
[9:31] Speaker 1: been hankering after their former king, Alexander Burns was exasperated.
[9:37] Speaker 1: He tried to tell them, but he was also loyal,
[9:41] Speaker 1: or maybe just ambitious. He was sent ahead of the
[9:44] Speaker 1: troops to try to smooth their path with local leaders.
[9:48] Speaker 1: On hearing about the size of the advancing army, one
[9:52] Speaker 1: such leader told him, you can easily replaced us to Hummed,
[9:56] Speaker 1: but you will never win over the Avar Niche. You
[10:00] Speaker 1: have brought an army into the country. How do you
[10:03] Speaker 1: propose to take it out again. That turned out to
[10:08] Speaker 1: be a very astute question. Cautionary tales will return after
[10:17] Speaker 1: this message. The British took action in Afghanistan. With hindsight,
[10:27] Speaker 1: they should have left it alone. That's an obvious enough
[10:30] Speaker 1: point from our modern perspective, but colonial invasions are by
[10:35] Speaker 1: no means the only situation we're doing less achieves more.
[10:40] Speaker 1: I've had a bad throat for a couple of days.
[10:42] Speaker 1: It happens every year. They usually give me zitherum ax
[10:46] Speaker 1: and it goes away. Let me see your throat looks normal.
[10:51] Speaker 1: It's very unlikely that you have stripped throat. I'll take
[10:54] Speaker 1: u s what, but it will likely be negative. Can
[10:56] Speaker 1: I have a prescription in the meantime? You don't need
[10:59] Speaker 1: a prescription? Why can't you just give me the prescription?
[11:03] Speaker 1: A surprising amount of medical care simply isn't necessary. A
[11:08] Speaker 1: few years ago, researchers conducted a survey of over two
[11:12] Speaker 1: thousand American physicians. On average, they secretly reckoned that one
[11:17] Speaker 1: tenth of the procedures they approved didn't actually need to
[11:21] Speaker 1: be done. Furthermore, their patients could have survived without a
[11:25] Speaker 1: fifth of the medications they were prescribed, and over a
[11:29] Speaker 1: quarter of the tests ordered were quite pointless. That adds
[11:34] Speaker 1: up to a lot of wasted time and money. What
[11:38] Speaker 1: were the doctors thinking? Sometimes they told the researchers it
[11:43] Speaker 1: was quicker to do another test than tracked down a
[11:46] Speaker 1: patient's medical records. But two motives far outweighed the others,
[11:51] Speaker 1: the fear of being sued for malpractice and a desire
[11:56] Speaker 1: to get rid of the pushy patients. That conversation about
[11:59] Speaker 1: zeromax and antibiotic came from a blog post by an
[12:03] Speaker 1: emergency room doctor in Canada, and it was shared by
[12:06] Speaker 1: the Canadian branch of an initiative called Choosing Wisely. The
[12:11] Speaker 1: aim of Choosing Wisely is to cut down on wasteful
[12:14] Speaker 1: medical spending. It produces lists of things not to do,
[12:19] Speaker 1: such as prescribing antibiotics for minor infections, viral infections, or
[12:25] Speaker 1: infections that exist only in a patient's imagination. Antibiotics are
[12:30] Speaker 1: a clear cut case. Their overuse affects us all by
[12:34] Speaker 1: speeding the growth of drug resistant bugs. But few medications
[12:39] Speaker 1: or procedures are completely free of risk, and some tests
[12:43] Speaker 1: can be a waste of time too. Say a patient
[12:46] Speaker 1: has lower back pain, they've had it for less than
[12:48] Speaker 1: six weeks and they have no other red flags. Do
[12:52] Speaker 1: you send them for a scan? It turns out to
[12:54] Speaker 1: make no difference to the patient's outcomes. Francois Mai is
[12:59] Speaker 1: an author and professor of psychiatry. He wrote about choosing
[13:03] Speaker 1: Wisely for the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Sometimes waiting and
[13:10] Speaker 1: seemingly doing nothing is the favored therapeutic modality. The favored
[13:16] Speaker 1: therapeutic modality. What Francois Mai is saying is that sometimes
[13:21] Speaker 1: the best treatment is no treatment at all, instead waiting
[13:27] Speaker 1: and watching. Ready to act, but only if you have
[13:31] Speaker 1: to make explains how he first came across this idea.
[13:36] Speaker 1: When I was a medical student, A wise old professor
[13:40] Speaker 1: introduced me to the treatment concept of masterly inactivity. So
[13:46] Speaker 1: there it is again, masterly inactivity. It's eighteen thirty nine.
[13:56] Speaker 1: A huge army of British and Indians is marching on Carbal.
[14:02] Speaker 1: The Afghan leader Dost Mohammad sees that the cause is hopeless.
[14:07] Speaker 1: Soon the old king is duly reinstalled. But while Dost
[14:11] Speaker 1: Muhammad had painstakingly earned the respect and goodwill of the
[14:15] Speaker 1: many tribal factions, those emperors behind every Hillock. The returned
[14:20] Speaker 1: king was seen as Britain's puppet. He relied on British
[14:24] Speaker 1: largesse and the occupying troops to keep everyone in line.
[14:29] Speaker 1: It was clear that the king wouldn't last if the
[14:33] Speaker 1: British troops withdrew, so they stayed. Some of the officers
[14:38] Speaker 1: had their families joined them. Lady Sail arrived in Carbal
[14:42] Speaker 1: with a grand piano, a marriageable daughter, and the collection
[14:46] Speaker 1: of seeds. My sweet peas and geraniums are much admired
[14:51] Speaker 1: in the kitchen garden. The potatoes especially fry. But the
[14:56] Speaker 1: cost of occupying Afghanistan was ruined us. The British East
[15:02] Speaker 1: India Company made tidy profits from tea and opium, but
[15:06] Speaker 1: those prophets were all swallowed up and more, and Afghans
[15:11] Speaker 1: were becoming more and more appalled at the liberties taken
[15:15] Speaker 1: by the Firangis the foreigners. One complained to the King
[15:20] Speaker 1: that female prostitutes are publicly day and night, carried on
[15:25] Speaker 1: horseback into the English camp. The King took it up
[15:28] Speaker 1: with the top British envoy, who unwisely waived the warrior away.
[15:34] Speaker 1: If we stopped the soldiers having sex, the poor boys
[15:38] Speaker 1: will fall quite ill. One man was acquiring a particularly
[15:43] Speaker 1: saucy reputation, the Envoy's deputy, Alexander Burns, the very devil himself.
[15:51] Speaker 1: Burns wasn't just a diplomatic charmer. He charmed the ladies too.
[15:55] Speaker 1: As one local writer described in his Private Courts, it
[16:00] Speaker 1: with decabath with his avrandmistress in the hot water of
[16:04] Speaker 1: lust and pleasure, as the two rubbed each other down
[16:08] Speaker 1: with the flans of giddy joy and the talk of intimacy.
[16:14] Speaker 1: Have a care Alexander Burns. Next to the flannels of
[16:18] Speaker 1: giddy joy and the talk of intimacy lies the tinder
[16:22] Speaker 1: of bad feeling. And in November eighteen forty one, something
[16:27] Speaker 1: happened to put a spark to that tinder. Some say
[16:31] Speaker 1: Burns seduced someone he shouldn't have, offending a local powerbroker.
[16:37] Speaker 1: Whatever the reason, a mob descended on burns house. He
[16:41] Speaker 1: sent a messenger to ask what they wanted. They killed
[16:44] Speaker 1: the messenger, stormed burns compound and hacked him to death.
[16:50] Speaker 1: The young Scott's dismembered body was left in the street
[16:53] Speaker 1: for the dogs to eat. Clearly the British lead forces
[17:00] Speaker 1: couldn't stay in Carbon Now Afghan rebels cut off the
[17:04] Speaker 1: camp's food supplies. That's why Lady Sales riding horse was
[17:08] Speaker 1: gnawing at a cartwheel. The British envoy tried to negotiate
[17:12] Speaker 1: for safe passage, but he clumsily doubled crossed the leaders
[17:16] Speaker 1: of rival factions in the rebellion, a sub diffuge that
[17:20] Speaker 1: ended with the swish of a sword, a sickening thunk,
[17:24] Speaker 1: and in the words of one young officer who witnessed it,
[17:28] Speaker 1: the British Envoy's head was whereas heels had been. Consternation
[17:33] Speaker 1: and horror depicted on his countenance after that execution, the
[17:38] Speaker 1: incompetent retreat, the unnecessary bridge, the long delay, the abandoned baggage,
[17:43] Speaker 1: the frozen night, the ambush. I had fortunately only one
[17:49] Speaker 1: bullet in my arm. The party that fired on us
[17:53] Speaker 1: were not above fifty yards from us, and we owed
[17:55] Speaker 1: our escaped to urging our horses on as fast as
[17:58] Speaker 1: they could go over a road where at any other
[18:01] Speaker 1: time we sort have walked our horses very carefully. Lady
[18:05] Speaker 1: Sayle's son in law was not so lucky. In the
[18:09] Speaker 1: stomach he died after the ambush came the blizzard. The
[18:16] Speaker 1: convoy made just one mile's progress in a day. Living
[18:20] Speaker 1: and dead were indistinguishment, motionless, and the frozen waists. The
[18:27] Speaker 1: British met a rebel leader on the road. He said,
[18:31] Speaker 1: give me the officers, wives and children. I'll keep them
[18:35] Speaker 1: safe and warm and fed. Lady Sale and her daughter
[18:40] Speaker 1: were now among the hostages taken back. Along the route
[18:44] Speaker 1: of their attempted escape, The road was covered with awfully
[18:48] Speaker 1: mangled bodies, all naked camp followers still alive, frostbitten and starving,
[18:57] Speaker 1: some perfectly out of their senses. The sight was dreadful,
[19:02] Speaker 1: the smell of the blood sickening. It required care to
[19:06] Speaker 1: guide my horse so as not to tread upon the bodies.
[19:13] Speaker 1: Nearly twenty thousand British and Indians soldiers, camp followers, men,
[19:18] Speaker 1: women and children set off from Carbal in the knee
[19:22] Speaker 1: high snow in January eighteen forty two. Barely one in
[19:26] Speaker 1: ten survived to tell the tale of what happened. It was,
[19:31] Speaker 1: in the words of the historian William Dalrymple, a rare
[19:35] Speaker 1: moment of complete colonial humiliation. The British Empire's pride had
[19:42] Speaker 1: been stung, and they lashed out. They still had other
[19:46] Speaker 1: troops in other Afghan cities. The orders came through withdraw
[19:52] Speaker 1: via Carbal, leaving decisive proofs of the power of the
[19:56] Speaker 1: British army. There followed one of the most shameful episodes
[20:01] Speaker 1: in British colonial history. The remaining troops laid waste to villages,
[20:07] Speaker 1: killing the men and raping the women, and even taking
[20:10] Speaker 1: the time for less heinous acts of cruelty, such as
[20:14] Speaker 1: destroying the ancient fruit trees in Carbal. They plundered the
[20:18] Speaker 1: shops and dynamited the grand bazaar that wants diverse and
[20:23] Speaker 1: thriving hub of commerce. As the Afghan writer Mirza Atta
[20:27] Speaker 1: put it, for all the treasure they expended and for
[20:31] Speaker 1: all the lives they sacrificed, the only result was ruin
[20:36] Speaker 1: and disgrace. Cautionary tales will return. Just a quarter century later,
[20:56] Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty seven, the drumbeats of war were sounding
[21:01] Speaker 1: again once more. British foreign policy experts were worried about
[21:06] Speaker 1: Russian ambitions in Central Asia, and the British military were
[21:10] Speaker 1: gung ho. But for now, at least, there was a
[21:14] Speaker 1: cautious man in charge of that decision. Britain had appointed
[21:19] Speaker 1: as India's Governor General, a man called John Lawrence. He
[21:24] Speaker 1: had his own views on the Afghans. I am for
[21:27] Speaker 1: letting them alone to adjust to their own affairs. What
[21:32] Speaker 1: you mean do nothing? Yes, but that didn't mean indifference
[21:38] Speaker 1: as some critics assumed. Remember how the physician Francois may
[21:42] Speaker 1: put it waiting and seemingly doing nothing. John Lawrence asked
[21:48] Speaker 1: a subordinate to write an article explaining that he had
[21:51] Speaker 1: his eye on things and he'd act if he had to,
[21:55] Speaker 1: but not before The article was published in the Edinburgh Review,
[22:00] Speaker 1: and it ran to some forty seven pages. Within those
[22:03] Speaker 1: pages were two words that caught on as a description
[22:08] Speaker 1: of Lawrence's approach. You know what's coming. Those words were
[22:13] Speaker 1: masterly inactivity. It's a challenge for doctors to practice masterly inactivity,
[22:26] Speaker 1: and the Canadian physician Francois Mai explains why many patients
[22:31] Speaker 1: demand that something, anything, be done to ease their complaint.
[22:35] Speaker 1: They believe that action, any action, is better than waiting
[22:39] Speaker 1: for the bodies built in remedies to do their bit.
[22:43] Speaker 1: Those lists of things not to do from the Choosing
[22:46] Speaker 1: Wisely initiative are intended to help doctors to have those
[22:50] Speaker 1: difficult conversations. Political leaders too often face demands to do
[22:56] Speaker 1: something about a perceived threat, and that often leads to
[23:00] Speaker 1: action that's rushed and ill conceived. There's an old joke
[23:04] Speaker 1: about politicians logic, we must do something. This is something, therefore,
[23:11] Speaker 1: we must do this. Behavioral economists call this an example
[23:15] Speaker 1: of action bias. In some situations, we seem to feel
[23:20] Speaker 1: compelled to take action even if there's no real evidence
[23:24] Speaker 1: that action will help. Perhaps the purest example of action
[23:29] Speaker 1: bias is seen in soccer goalkeepers facing a penalty kick.
[23:34] Speaker 1: The goalkeeper tends to dive either left or right a
[23:37] Speaker 1: split second before the penalty taker kicks the ball. The
[23:41] Speaker 1: thinking is that if they've correctly guessed which side the
[23:44] Speaker 1: striker will aim for, that split second will give them
[23:48] Speaker 1: more chance of reaching the ball if it goes near
[23:50] Speaker 1: the edge of the goal. But penalties are often kicked
[23:54] Speaker 1: nearer the middle of the goal, and studies show that
[23:57] Speaker 1: if the goalkeepers stood still and waited to see where
[24:00] Speaker 1: the ball was heading, they'd say more penalties. So why
[24:04] Speaker 1: don't they? Presumably because soccer fans are like patient patience
[24:10] Speaker 1: or anxious voters. They expect action. Seemingly doing nothing, you
[24:17] Speaker 1: can take a lot of courage, Sir Stafford Northcott was
[24:24] Speaker 1: the British government minister in charge of India at the
[24:28] Speaker 1: time John Lawrence was its Governor General. He told the
[24:32] Speaker 1: House of Commons, the policy of Sir John Lawrence, which
[24:36] Speaker 1: has been characterized sometimes half sneeringly, I'm afraid as a
[24:42] Speaker 1: policy of masterly inactivity, is what we ought in every
[24:47] Speaker 1: way to support and strengthen them, sometimes half sneeringly. Why
[24:54] Speaker 1: the sneers well. Some of John Lawrence's more bellicose critics
[25:00] Speaker 1: thought he was too afraid to act. They thought he'd
[25:03] Speaker 1: been scarred by his family connection to the omnishambles of
[25:07] Speaker 1: the first Anglo Afghan Or remember that young officer who'd
[25:12] Speaker 1: watched in horror as the top British envoy was beheaded.
[25:16] Speaker 1: That officer was John Lawrence's brother. Other critics doubted if
[25:22] Speaker 1: Britain could do anything in Afghanistan, after all, the last
[25:26] Speaker 1: time they'd tried it had ended in humiliation. And if
[25:30] Speaker 1: in fact there's nothing you can do, your inactivity can't
[25:34] Speaker 1: be masterly, you're deluding yourself if you think that it is.
[25:39] Speaker 1: The Victorian pioneer of free range parenting, Charlotte Mason took
[25:44] Speaker 1: pains to make that point. Consider the difference between this
[25:48] Speaker 1: scenario an ice cream shop, can we get ice creams? Yes,
[25:52] Speaker 1: we can, let's treat ourselves, and this scenario an ice
[25:57] Speaker 1: cream shop, can we get ice creams? I don't think please,
[26:01] Speaker 1: It'll be dinner time sooner. I really want an ice cream.
[26:05] Speaker 1: Oh well, I suppose please? Can we get ice creams?
[26:07] Speaker 1: All right? Then? Mason describes that as the difference between
[26:13] Speaker 1: a masterly yes and an abject yes. She points out
[26:18] Speaker 1: how much better it feels to give a masterly yes
[26:21] Speaker 1: if you're eating ice cream after an abject yes. It
[26:25] Speaker 1: tastes of nagging, worry that you've incentivized more pestering in
[26:29] Speaker 1: the future. But the only way you get to give
[26:32] Speaker 1: a masterly yes is if you know that you could
[26:35] Speaker 1: have said no. So masterly inactivity has two ingredients. You
[26:44] Speaker 1: need the wisdom to judge where an activity would be
[26:46] Speaker 1: pointless or counterproductive, and you need to be sure that
[26:50] Speaker 1: you would have the ability to act if and when
[26:54] Speaker 1: you judge that the time is right. It's that second
[26:58] Speaker 1: ingredient that makes masterly inactivity such a useful idea. It's
[27:02] Speaker 1: what makes it different from ideas like benign neglect, lay
[27:07] Speaker 1: say fair or lay say allay. Those phrases imply a
[27:11] Speaker 1: realization that trying to act will always be pointless or counterproductive.
[27:17] Speaker 1: As Mason herself put it, the phrase has nothing in
[27:20] Speaker 1: common with the lazy alley attitude that comes of thinking
[27:24] Speaker 1: what's the good? There are times when that is the
[27:27] Speaker 1: right attitude. There's a much repeated story of an investment
[27:31] Speaker 1: brokerage that discovered their best performing accounts belonged to clients
[27:36] Speaker 1: who had died, because being dead, they were no longer
[27:41] Speaker 1: tempted to keep meddling with their stock portfolio. Sadly, that
[27:45] Speaker 1: story seems to be an urban myth, but it persists
[27:49] Speaker 1: because it rings true. One classic study finds that the
[27:53] Speaker 1: most active investors did significantly worse than those who simply
[27:57] Speaker 1: brought into the market and let their investments ride. If
[28:02] Speaker 1: your Warren Buffett masterly inactivity might make sense, what's your
[28:06] Speaker 1: portfolio always ready to act? For most of us, benign
[28:11] Speaker 1: neglect looks like the better option. We should just admit
[28:15] Speaker 1: that we lack the competence ever to intervene wisely. But
[28:19] Speaker 1: of course that's hardly an attitude you want from doctors
[28:24] Speaker 1: or parents, and you don't want a goalkeeper to benignly
[28:28] Speaker 1: neglect her goal. Lady Sale spent months as a hostage,
[28:40] Speaker 1: along with her widowed daughter and now a baby granddaughter too.
[28:45] Speaker 1: She said, the Afghan rebels treated them well. Honor has
[28:49] Speaker 1: been respected. It's true that we have not common comforts,
[28:54] Speaker 1: but what we denominate such are unknown to Afghan females. Eventually,
[29:00] Speaker 1: the hostages were assigned new guards, who proved to be bribeable,
[29:05] Speaker 1: especially with the news that British troops were on their way.
[29:09] Speaker 1: The guards even offered the hostages their guns. The men
[29:13] Speaker 1: were so surprised nobody rushed to take one. But one
[29:18] Speaker 1: person had her wits about her. You had better give
[29:21] Speaker 1: me one and I will leave the party. Someone else
[29:26] Speaker 1: had been held captive too. Dost Mohammed, the Afghan leader
[29:31] Speaker 1: the British had deposed. He had surrendered to British troops
[29:35] Speaker 1: and they'd let him live in India. Now they quietly
[29:38] Speaker 1: set him free. He rebuilt his power and ruled Afghanistan
[29:43] Speaker 1: again for two more decades. He was good at it,
[29:47] Speaker 1: As Alexander Burns had noticed once, Afghans would have been
[29:52] Speaker 1: far better off if Dost Mohammed had never been interrupted.
[30:00] Speaker 1: Britain eventually fell in love with a notion of masterly inactivity,
[30:05] Speaker 1: and it was certainly an improvement on the atrocities committed
[30:09] Speaker 1: by their armies, but perhaps benign neglect would have been
[30:14] Speaker 1: better all along. Key sources for this episode include William
[30:26] Speaker 1: Dalrymple's of the Return of a King, Charlotte Mason's book
[30:30] Speaker 1: School Education, and Francoire MAI's article for the Canadian Medical
[30:34] Speaker 1: Association Journal. For a full list of references, see Tim
[30:39] Speaker 1: Harford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim
[30:44] Speaker 1: Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan Dilley and
[30:48] Speaker 1: Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the
[30:52] Speaker 1: work of Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. Starring
[30:57] Speaker 1: in this series of Cautionary Tales are Helena Bonan Carter
[31:01] Speaker 1: and Geoffrey Wright, alongside Nazar Alderazzi, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge,
[31:08] Speaker 1: Rachel Handshaw, Cognor Holbrook Smith, Greg Lockett, the Siamunroe and
[31:14] Speaker 1: Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
[31:18] Speaker 1: the work of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Hella Fane, John Schnarz,
[31:23] Speaker 1: Carlie mcgliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostock, Maggie Taylor, Daniella Lakhan,
[31:30] Speaker 1: and Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
[31:36] Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to share, rate,
[31:39] Speaker 1: and review.

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