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Modelling the Economist. Ben Alldred Twenty two months ago, I started reading my wife's weekly copy of the "Economist." I was uneasy at the time about reading the magazine. I clearly remember having to convince myself that the action of reading this publication was resourceful as it increased my understanding of the wider world. More information can only be a good thing. On reading the articles I found many of them interesting, some informative, some challenging and some I disagreed with. Overall, I looked forward to this weekly opportunity to sample a new model of the world. However, for the whole of this time a part of me has felt that this weekly fix was a less than honest activity. I have a simplistic understanding of Economics. My knowledge can be summed up in the following way. I feel that human beings need to trade beliefs and values. It is at the root of our communication. I feel that this need to trade with each other extends from beliefs and values to goods and services. Writing this article is my way of trading my beliefs and values with a wider audience. I feel that the desire to trade is a means to an end, and not an end in itself. People trade beliefs and values to help them construct a larger map of the world. This larger map encompasses more people and, therefore, allows a person's circle of influence and kinship to be increased. Similarly, goods and services are traded to create stability. This stability arises when one person provides a product or services that another person needs, and vice versa. I can best sum this up by saying that people trade with others to reduce the probability that they will suffer from environmental, behavioural or cognitive shock. I am anxious about the critical comparison of people's ability to trade with one another. To me this comparison misses the point about life. We do not "exist to trade" but we do "trade to exist". The difference between these two points of view is massive. Economics is a social science that compares and contrasts the ability to trade. Therefore, Economics is a frame through which we can view the world. As such Economics is not real but a set of filters. My incongruence with the filters used in the Economist is probably the cause of my apprehension when reading the magazine. After reading about NLP, I started studying the topic last September (2003). This was initially through an Adult Education course. I am currently in the process of completing a NLP practitioner's certification course. This period of inquiry has created many thoughts about NLP and its usefulness. About a fortnight ago, I was in the bath, day dreaming when I was presented with the following thought: socio-economic news articles in the Economist are organised using Robert Dilts' Neurological Levels Model. I will try to explain how this idea makes sense to me. In the Economist, socio-economic news articles appear under the section headings: Britain, Europe, United States, The Americas, Middle East & Africa and Asia. The content of an article is structured in one of two ways. Firstly, it could simply concern a topic based within one of the six neurological levels (environment, behaviour, skills, belief, identity and spirituality). Secondly, it could discuss one of the neurological levels within the context of another neurological level. One neurological level is used as a pretext for another probably higher referenced neurological level. I accept the first of my classifications of articles, as the neurological level model is wide enough to encompass any topic at one level or another. To provide the following examples I used the Economist issued on the date 21st - 27th August 2004 (volume 372, number 8389). The reason I chose this issue was probably because of the front cover, which had a cartoon of a dragon spouting black smoke next to the head line " China's growing pains - Special reports on pollution and health care." When I compared the percentage of articles (See the table below) about skills/behaviour/environment that exist within the USA section, with any of the other sections of the magazine, I found that there were always proportionately fewer articles within the USA section than in any one other.
With the second classification of articles, where there is a surface level and a subsurface level, I feel there is a usage of the Milton communication model in its structure, where there is a context buried at a deeper level in the article. To illustrate this I will describe four articles from the Economist. The first is on page 45, and has the heading "Football diplomacy - Haitians unite for a day." This article discusses the behaviour of Haitians when the Brazilian football team played in the country; the subtext of the article is the violent environment that surrounds the occasion of this match. The second article is from the USA section on page 40, and concerns gay marriage. It is titled "Fear the counter- attack. State initiatives banning gay marriage have got activists jumping." This article concerns the behaviour of two groups of people; however, the subtext concerns the identity of both parties. The third is on page 29, and starts with the caption "Warmongers, stand easy - What do you do when there's neither jaw-jaw nor war-war?" The behaviours of seven Northern Irish politicians since the Good Friday agreement is contrasted; the subtext discusses the skills of the seven individuals involved. The fourth article appears on page 54, and regards India's north- east, it is titled "Fraying at the edges - Trouble beyond the chicken's neck." The behaviour of the Indian government in reaction to militant action in the Assam region is the main theme of this article; whilst the subtext is the violent environment that is being created by these militant groups. On the surface of these four articles, I am comparing behaviours. However, at a different level I am comparing US identity, British skills, Haitian environment and Indian environment. I feel that the neurological level of the subtext of developed countries tends to be higher than that of developing countries. The pattern of higher neurological level subtext in USA articles repeats in this and other issues of the Economist. I have checked this using several different issues and compared the relative frequencies for each neurological level. There are also other irregularities in the way that regions, continents and countries are treated in the Economist, but this seems to be beyond the scope of what I am describing here. I have asked myself the following questions several times over the past few weeks. What is the purpose of this pattern? How do I know there is a pattern? I feel that the answer to the first is hegemony of Western cultural, economic and military identity. The table overleaf also suggests that the USA is equated with the European continent, whereas Britain is classified differently. Perhaps this answer only appears when seen through my filters and map of the world. I know that there is a pattern because I have checked several editions of the Economist and am confident about my analysis, but check for yourself if you are curious.
Ben Alldred
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