Go to Making Light's front page.
Forward to next post: Strict orthodoxy
Subscribe (via RSS) to this post's comment thread. (What does this mean? Here's a quick introduction.)
1. The Culture of Motivation
I arrived at certain theories about George W. Bush by a strange route, which was thinking about the class of writers who take rejection worst. I don’t mean the ones who’re hurt worst; I couldn ‘t possibly judge that. I’m talking about the ones who react with aggressive denial. And it seemed to me that the ones I most often saw doing that were middle-aged white guys with a management background.
As a class, their writing was on average no better nor worse than other comparable group of authors, and many of them were as modest and persevering as any writer you could meet. Still, when when I looked at the writers who reacted to their first few rejections with a sense of massively affronted entitlement, followed by the swift conviction that a publishing industry that gave them that reaction must be broken, it was remarkable how many of them belonged to that class.
You could spin out a lot of thumb-sucking theory about this, but my belief is I was seeing the habits of mind and character inculcated by a certain strain of American corporate culture. To put it succinctly, imagine that Dilbert ‘s pointy-haired boss has decided he ‘s going to be a bestselling writer, only he keeps getting rejected.
After a while it occurs to the PHB that nobody wants his masterwork in its current form. Note: the book may well be in near-publishable form, but his habitual strategies won’t lead him to figure that out and work on becoming a better author. Instead, he announces that the publishing industry as we’ve known it is dead, or hopelessly broken, or in such bad shape that it can no longer publish promising new writers; but lo! E-publishing, or POD publishing, or whatever model he’s lighted upon, is obviously the cutting edge of the future. And by the way, O lucky readers, here’s his own book, now available in that format.
I’ve lost count of all the e-publishing and pod-publishing sites these guys have started. Sometimes their book is the only one listed there. Sometimes they ‘ve persuaded other marginal writers to throw in their fortunes with them. It’s a complicated world.
Anyway, after years of birdwatching these guys, and their distinctive response to frustration, I think I’ve gotten a sense of their mindset. It’s not well adapted to writing and publishing, which depend so much on audience response. Perhaps it’s more useful if you’re a pointy-haired boss. Or perhaps causality runs the other way, and it’s simply what PHBs are pleased to believe is useful.
They appear to believe that whatever success they’ve had in life is solely due to their own shrewdness and hard work. It ‘s likewise an article of faith that they have an absolute right to succeed, if only they believe in their own success hard enough and are steadfast in its pursuit; and furthermore, that nonbelievers’ input not only doesn’t matter, but ought to be resolutely ignored.
Facts and mechanisms are not the issue. Their relationship with success is mystical and emotional. Thus, the person who quibbles with the details of their plan is their enemy rather than their ally. Such impediments will of course be overcome if the employee correctly understands and implements the magic PHB force of will. After all, that’s what force of will is there for. In the meantime, by expressing reservations the employee has potentially weakened the all-important PHB confidence. That’s not being a good employee.
(Do I need to point out that there’s a world of difference between absolute faith in the success of work you do yourself, and absolute faith in your own success when your job consists of telling other people what to do?)
PHBs also have a fervent belief in team effort, by which they mean team effort on the part of the people under them. Team players are demonstrating their own belief in the eventual success of the enterprise, which confirms the boss ‘s faith in himself and thus makes him stronger.
Of course, if this were the way things actually work, the Soviet Union would have been the greatest and most successful state in the history of the world. (Which reminds me: You know how topical jokes are generally formed by adapting earlier groups of cognate jokes? I’ve been looking into the current batch of GWB jokes, and find that many of the jokes from which they’re drawn were originally about Stalin. But I digress.)
I’ve long wondered whether PHBs have any sense that the real importance of team effort is that it’s the only way their plans get carried out. This is illustrated by that basic sitcom plot where Chuck walks in dressed as a giant slice of pie. (laughtrack) His assistant Leslie expresses surprise and disbelief. (laughtrack) Chuck groans, and explains that this is part of his boss ‘s latest brainstorm, and that he ‘s been assigned to implement it. (laughtrack) The rest of the episode will consist of Chuck and Leslie, helped by a couple of other employees in that department plus their crony Lee down in Systems, trying to make the boss’s insanely stupid idea work so that Chuck can keep his job.
Nine times out of ten, when an employer says during a job interview that he doesn ‘t care how the work gets done as long as it gets done, he means he isn’t going to want to hear that what he’s asked for is impossible. It may be that this is the true secret advantage of the PHB mindset: they aren’t hampered by questions of feasibility. They don’t have to know whether something they want is even possible, much less how much it’ll cost those under them. They just exercise their magic force of will, and if there’s any way the thing can be made possible, their underlings will have to find it and make it work.
If you don’t believe me, just look at the motivational posters that get put up in corporate lunchrooms. PHBs are the ones who buy them and put them up. And because they think these posters are genuinely motivating (ho), we can reasonably judge that they reflect the way PHBs actually think. Here are some I collected a while back:
—It is the size of one’s will which determines success.
—Victory goes to the man whose desire is strongest.
—Believe in yourself and anything becomes possible.
—Vision is not seeing things as they are but as they will be.
—What would you not attempt to achieve, if you believed it was impossible to fail?
—The fundamentals of a person are not in substance, but in spirit.
—What is genius, but the power of expressing a new individuality?
—There is only one success: to be able to live your life in your own way.
—The world has a habit of making room for those who know where they are going.
—The distance between a person’s dreams and their accomplishments can only be measured by their desire.
—The difference between the unattainable and the attainable lies in a person’s determination.
—The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
—You have to know you can win. You have to think you can win. You have to feel you can win.
—Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason
—Spread your wings, unencumbered by fear.
Reflections on the relationship between labor and management:
—Destiny is a matter of choice, not chance
—Power gravitates to the man who has courage.
—We make way for the one who pushes past us.
—The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak, becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong
—It is a sad fact that regardless of effort or talent, second place really means you are first in a long line of losers.
Virtuous precepts for underlings:
—It takes the efforts of many to make impossible feats possible.
—Individuals play the games, but teams win championships.
—Welcome the chores that make you go beyond yourself.
—The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.
—You can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.
—There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.
—Many people have gone further than they thought they could because somebody else thought they could.
—When a team makes a commitment to act as one, the sky’s the limit.
—Together we are winners.
A historical note: The corporation that had the most, and most fervent, motivational and inspirational corporate-branded pelf I ‘ve ever seen? That would have to be Enron. They were swimming in it ’ everything from posters, pens, and t-shirts to Christmas ornaments and fine cut-crystal tchotchkes. And when Enron went boom, and screwed its employees six ways from Sunday, you should have seen how fast that stuff came flying onto eBay. The saddest ones were the employee awards set with little jewels showing how many years of devoted work they’d put into the company: Together, we aren’t winners.
2. Without a Doubt
This is Ron Suskind, from this week’s New York Times Magazine:
Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ”if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.” The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.
If you’re a Republican, don’t automatically assume that these are your guys. Far from it, in fact. If you’re a responsible citizen, this is something you really do have to stop and think about.
”Just in the past few months,” Bartlett said, ”I think a light has gone off for people who’ve spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.” Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush’s governance, went on to say: ”This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can’t be persuaded, that they’re extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he’s just like them. …
It’s not cute, and it’s not funny, and it’s not religion. George Bush is running national policy on faith—but it’s not faith in God. It’s become something far stranger and more idolatrous.
What he’s put his faith in is George W. Bush, which is not the same thing as saying he believes in himself. He can’t believe in himself; he knows he doesn’t know anything. But instead of seeking more information and better counsel, he’s abandoned the frustrations of dealing with the factual, external universe. He’s now basing everything on the instincts of George W. Bush. That’s where the smirk comes from.
He’s certain he’s right. So was every dotcom investor. So is every blackjack player in Las Vegas.
Pause, then. Some of you already think this must be hyperbole, and that Bush can’t explicitly, literally, concretely have given up on external data and the reasoned analysis thereof.
Unfortunately, that’s what Suskind is saying.
Meanwhile, some of you may be hearing “faith” and “God”, and thinking Bush can’t be a bad guy if he’s using that as his basis for action. However, what you’re imagining is not what’s going on.
I’m not going to discuss my doubts about Bush’s spiritual life, though I have them. There’s a deeper problem. A whole bunch of times now, Bush has been absolutely certain of his decisions, overflowing with faith—and dead wrong. So whatever it is he’s put his faith in, it’s something that’s telling him things that aren’t true.
As I’m sure you’re aware, God doesn’t do that.
Onward.
”This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,” Bartlett went on to say. ”He truly believes he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.” Bartlett paused, then said, ”But you can’t run the world on faith.”Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ”I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,” he began, ”and I was telling the president of my many concerns”—concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. ”’Mr. President,’ I finally said, ‘How can you be so sure when you know you don’t know the facts?”’
Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator’s shoulder. ”My instincts,” he said. ”My instincts.”
Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ”I said, ‘Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough!”’
We think we know the temptations the world has to offer us: money, power, gluttony, various carnal pleasures. We imagine them, in mostly cartoonish forms.
But there are other, subtler temptations that don’t get nearly as much publicity. The desire to be in on secrets: that’s a good one. The desire to overact: there’s another, a very strong temptation. Haven’t we all seen people blow opportunities, alienate their loved ones, and make fools of themselves in public, because they couldn’t resist the urge to give themselves all the killer lines in the script?
But there’s another one, even subtler, that I think Bush has fallen into: The desire to just be what you are, and do what you wish, and have it somehow turn out to be right. It’s one of the great misuses of power. We all want to be ourselves, but our authentic selves don’t always get the reactions we want from the real world. (Somehow this puts me in mind of Anna Vargo’s definition of adolescence as the stage where you think your actions have only the consequences you intend.)
This mismatch between our authentic unmodified selves and the world’s reaction to us puts us under the terrible necessity of changing what we are: a process that’s seldom pleasant, and never feels natural. We resent it. Few of us will undertake it unless driven by need, and at the earliest opportunity we stop, sure that whatever changes we’ve put ourselves through already must surely be enough.
Thus the appeal of that magical state where what you are and what you do will always turn out to be right. Bush knew that temptation before he ever ran for office. It’s a lot easier to be confident and decisive when there’s a glass floor right there under your feet, and an endless supply of people willing to bail you out.
The democrat Biden and the Republican Bartlett are trying to make sense of the same thing—a president who has been an extraordinary blend of forcefulness and inscrutability, opacity and action.But lately, words and deeds are beginning to connect.
The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush’s top deputies—from cabinet members like Paul O’Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq—have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president’s decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ”gut” or his ”instinct” to guide the ship of state, and then he ”prayed over it.” The old pro Bartlett, a deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President George W. Bush. This evangelical group—the core of the energetic ”base” that may well usher Bush to victory—believes that their leader is a messenger from God. And in the first presidential debate, many Americans heard the discursive John Kerry succinctly raise, for the first time, the issue of Bush’s certainty—the issue being, as Kerry put it, that ”you can be certain and be wrong.”
Consider, for instance, the French at Poitiers, Agincourt, and Cr ‘cy.
What underlies Bush’s certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent?… The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision—often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position—he expects complete faith in its rightness.
The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce; Bush’s intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility—a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains—is not just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House. As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: ”In meetings, I’d ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!” (Whitman, whose faith in Bush has since been renewed, denies making these remarks and is now a leader of the president’s re-election effort in New Jersey.) …
The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret. The dome of silence cracked a bit in the late winter and spring, with revelations from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and also, in my book, from the former Bush treasury secretary Paul O’Neill. When I quoted O’Neill saying that Bush was like ”a blind man in a room full of deaf people,” this did not endear me to the White House. But my phone did begin to ring, with Democrats and Republicans calling with similar impressions and anecdotes about Bush’s faith and certainty. These are among the sources I relied upon for this article. Few were willing to talk on the record. Some were willing to talk because they said they thought George W. Bush might lose; others, out of fear of what might transpire if he wins. In either case, there seems to be a growing silence fatigue—public servants, some with vast experience, who feel they have spent years being treated like Victorian-era children, seen but not heard, and are tired of it. But silence still reigns in the highest reaches of the White House.
They have no obligation to keep the public informed because we have no role in this new system. You have no role. They don’t need you. Bush consults only with Bush. Concepts like an informed electorate and the consent of the governed belong to the old, superseded, fact-based system of thought.
… This is one key feature of the faith-based presidency: open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which undercuts faith. It could result in a loss of confidence in the decision-maker and, just as important, by the decision-maker. Nothing could be more vital, whether staying on message with the voters or the terrorists or a California congressman in a meeting about one of the world’s most nagging problems. As Bush himself has said any number of times on the campaign trail, ”By remaining resolute and firm and strong, this world will be peaceful.”
Recognize this guy? It’s the pointy-haired boss from the Dilbert Universe. He doesn’t have to know anything. He just has to Make Decisions and Be Resolute. It’s the people working under him who have to worry about the real-world details.
Biden, who early on became disenchanted with Bush’s grasp of foreign-policy issues and is among John Kerry’s closest Senate friends, has spent a lot of time trying to size up the president. ”Most successful people are good at identifying, very early, their strengths and weaknesses, at knowing themselves,” he told me not long ago. ”For most of us average Joes, that meant we’ve relied on strengths but had to work on our weakness—to lift them to adequacy—otherwise they might bring us down. I don’t think the president really had to do that, because he always had someone there—his family or friends—to bail him out. I don’t think, on balance, that has served him well for the moment he’s in now as president. He never seems to have worked on his weaknesses.”
It must be nice to be able to live like that. I’m not sure it’s good for you, but it sure sounds nice.
Bush has been called the C.E.O. president, but that’s just a catch phrase—he never ran anything of consequence in the private sector. The M.B.A. president would be more accurate: he did, after all, graduate from Harvard Business School. And some who have worked under him in the White House and know about business have spotted a strange business-school time warp. It’s as if a 1975 graduate from H.B.S.—one who had little chance to season theory with practice during the past few decades of change in corporate America—has simply been dropped into the most challenging management job in the world.… As I reported in “The Price of Loyalty,” at the Bush administration’s first National Security Council meeting, Bush asked if anyone had ever met Ariel Sharon. Some were uncertain if it was a joke. It wasn’t: Bush launched into a riff about briefly meeting Sharon two years before, how he wouldn’t ”go by past reputations when it comes to Sharon… . I’m going to take him at face value,” and how the United States should pull out of the Arab-Israeli conflict because ”I don’t see much we can do over there at this point.” Colin Powell, for one, seemed startled. This would reverse 30 years of policy—since the Nixon administration—of American engagement. Such a move would unleash Sharon, Powell countered, and tear the delicate fabric of the Mideast in ways that might be irreparable. Bush brushed aside Powell’s concerns impatiently. ”Sometimes a show of force by one side can really clarify things.”
Such challenges—from either Powell or his opposite number as the top official in domestic policy, Paul O’Neill—were trials that Bush had less and less patience for as the months passed. He made that clear to his top lieutenants. Gradually, Bush lost what Richard Perle, who would later head a largely private-sector group under Bush called the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had described as his open posture during foreign-policy tutorials prior to the 2000 campaign. (”He had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn’t know very much,” Perle said.) By midyear 2001, a stand-and-deliver rhythm was established. Meetings, large and small, started to take on a scripted quality. Even then, the circle around Bush was tightening. Top officials, from cabinet members on down, were often told when they would speak in Bush’s presence, for how long and on what topic. The president would listen without betraying any reaction. Sometimes there would be cross-discussions—Powell and Rumsfeld, for instance, briefly parrying on an issue—but the president would rarely prod anyone with direct, informed questions.
Each administration, over the course of a term, is steadily shaped by its president, by his character, personality and priorities. It is a process that unfolds on many levels. There are, of course, a chief executive’s policies, which are executed by a staff and attending bureaucracies. But a few months along, officials, top to bottom, will also start to adopt the boss’s phraseology, his presumptions, his rhythms. If a president fishes, people buy poles; if he expresses displeasure, aides get busy finding evidence to support the judgment. A staff channels the leader.
A cluster of particularly vivid qualities was shaping George W. Bush’s White House through the summer of 2001: a disdain for contemplation or deliberation, an embrace of decisiveness, a retreat from empiricism, a sometimes bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly questioners. Already Bush was saying, Have faith in me and my decisions, and you’ll be rewarded. All through the White House, people were channeling the boss. He didn’t second-guess himself; why should they? …
[In the immediate aftermath of 9/11:] This is where the faith-based presidency truly takes shape. Faith, which for months had been coloring the decision-making process and a host of political tactics—think of his address to the nation on stem-cell research—now began to guide events. It was the most natural ascension: George W. Bush turning to faith in his darkest moment and discovering a wellspring of power and confidence.
Of course, the mandates of sound, sober analysis didn’t vanish. They never do. Ask any entrepreneur with a blazing idea when, a few years along, the first debt payments start coming due. Or the C.E.O., certain that a high stock price affirms his sweeping vision, until that neglected, flagging division cripples the company. There’s a startled look—how’d that happen? In this case, the challenge of mobilizing the various agencies of the United States government and making certain that agreed-upon goals become demonstrable outcomes grew exponentially.
Looking back at the months directly following 9/11, virtually every leading military analyst seems to believe that rather than using Afghan proxies, we should have used more American troops, deployed more quickly, to pursue Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora. Many have also been critical of the president’s handling of Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 hijackers; despite Bush’s setting goals in the so-called ”financial war on terror,” the Saudis failed to cooperate with American officials in hunting for the financial sources of terror. …
No new input, just lots of decisiveness. I could weep for my poor country, which in time of crisis found itself armed only with the contents of George W. Bush’s head.
”When I was first with Bush in Austin, what I saw was a self-help Methodist, very open, seeking,” [Jim Wallis, of the Sojourners] says now. ”What I started to see at this point was the man that would emerge over the next year—a messianic American Calvinist. He doesn’t want to hear from anyone who doubts him.”… In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
What they’re describing is not how the world works, ever. It’s pure folly, the kind of pure self-conscious folly that mistakes the temporary success of hubris for proof of Divine favor.
Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: ”Look, I want your vote. I’m not going to debate it with you.” When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, ”Look, I’m not going to debate it with you.”
If we’d wanted a hereditary monarchy, we could have kept the one we had.
Believing that God prompts your every decision is no guarantee that God will do so. If you abandon your responsibility for thought, judgement, research, and counsel, you’ll be left with maybe a few small, still promptings from God, and a whole lot of noisy promptings from your own will and desire.
The 9/11 commission did not directly address the question of whether Bush exerted influence over the intelligence community about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. That question will be investigated after the election, but if no tangible evidence of undue pressure is found, few officials or alumni of the administration whom I spoke to are likely to be surprised. ”If you operate in a certain way—by saying this is how I want to justify what I’ve already decided to do, and I don’t care how you pull it off—you guarantee that you’ll get faulty, one-sided information,” Paul O’Neill, who was asked to resign his post of treasury secretary in December 2002, said when we had dinner a few weeks ago. ”You don’t have to issue an edict, or twist arms, or be overt.”In a way, the president got what he wanted: a National Intelligence Estimate on W.M.D. that creatively marshaled a few thin facts, and then Colin Powell putting his credibility on the line at the United Nations in a show of faith. That was enough for George W. Bush to press forward and invade Iraq. As he told his quasi-memoirist, Bob Woodward, in ”Plan of Attack”: ”Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord’s will… . I’m surely not going to justify the war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray to be as good a messenger of his will as possible.”
So Bush threw reasoned analysis out the window, and in its place found what he thought was God telling him to go to war with Iraq, which just happened to be what Bush—and all his favorite advisors—had been planning to do since well before the 2000 election.
This has nothing to do with religion. This is a combination of self-indulgence and Stupid Executive Tricks. If you believe that your will and imagination are the only determinants of success, the most you’ll get is what you’ve wanted and imagined. In Bush’s case, that’s simply not enough.
One of the american myths that I've found most interesting over time is the "self made man". It's the persistant belief that anybody can, with a bit of hard work, succeed in becoming rich and famous beyond their dreams.
It's rather unfortunate though - it's extraordinarily rare, and the classic rags-to-riches story is just that - a story.
Associated with this is the "you don't need no learnin'" and the oddity of being proud of a lack of education (most of the people that I know who have succeeded without formal education are still voracious about accumulating information).
These seem to play in to what you're describing here.
[I've also had the dubious joy of being a part of an enronesque company. Impressive blinkers, and you learned to keep your head down, and keep quiet - and look for an out.]
I'd have thought the evangelicals were familiar with all those Biblical passages about being wary of false prophets. Evidently not.
(And on a side-note, it's interesting to see that the University of Manchester, where I'm based, is currently twisting itself into all sorts of knots based on a new head honcho who is invincibly convinced of his rightness, refuses to listen to those who feel the effects of his decisions, and who never did proper research before making those decisions in the first place. Megalomania's a wonderful thing...)
One of the american myths that I've found most interesting over time is the "self made man". It's the persistant belief that anybody can, with a bit of hard work, succeed in becoming rich and famous beyond their dreams.
Which is why there's a companion myth to accompany it: That rich people are monumentally unhappy and would give anything to be able to enjoy the simple pleasures that you and I take for granted.
I read these two phrases,
"[...] middle-aged white guys with a management background." "[...] reacted to their first few rejections with a sense of massively affronted entitlement, followed by the swift conviction that a publishing industry that gave them that reaction must be broken [...]"
and a light went on. For many of these are people who have been raised with enormous and undeserved advantages; they think they are entitled because most of the people around them have deferred to them all their lives. If you're a boy, or, especially, a young man, and people around you treat you like a little king, it's easy to end up believing that one's life is easy because one is especially virtuous. Much easier, and much more ego-satisfying, than believing that one is the recipient of undeserved privilege. W. Bush, born to an awesomely powerful father and raised in more privilege than most of us can even imagine, believes he is favored by the most powerful Father of all. And I think he doubts. He's too good at connecting with people not to have hints, and I think this contributed to his alcholism. But he is evading his doubts, and his evasion only makes his grandiosity greater.
Maybe. Maybe. I suppose W's grandiosity finds an answering echo in voters who want very badly to believe in such things for them and theirs; this flows into US exceptionalism. But usually the way people abandon grandiosity is through dramatic failure and the discovery of alternatives--rare indeed is the child of privilege who renounces that sense of special virtue voluntarily.
I think Vietnam was the dramatic failure of the last generation, and I fear Iraq will be the failure of this one. Getting the USA to abandon exceptionalism will be the task of centuries, I think. So for our side to win in our lifetimes, I suppose W., and his radical right policies, must be made to seem "failures" in the eyes of their supporters and an attractive alternative offered. How to do that...
...trying to make the boss’s insanely stupid idea work so that Chuck can keep his job.
This is especially insidious in an economy where the employees wander around miserably, with glazed eyes, muttering, "Well at least I have a job."
It explains so much about the administration, though.
Those motivational posters reminded me of this conversation in Pratchett's children's book Wee Free Men:
"Are you listening?"
"Yes," said Tiffany.
"Good. Now ... if you trust in yourself ..."
"Yes?"
"... and believe in your dreams ..."
"Yes?"
"... and follow your star.. ." Miss Tick went on.
"Yes?"
"... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Good-bye."
The joke about the Self Made Man myth is that in its gospel text, all Gatsby's money and aspirations (a) don't get him into East Egg and (b) result in his pointless death.
The joke about Enron is that the company didn't need to commit massive fraud; it would have gone down in flames eventually from its totally illogical management structure, in which people would go off and start on a new idea without ever proposing it up the chain of management. Each individual exec had his own little stable of worker bees and his own pet projects, kept secret so as to claim all the fame when they should be completed, and so many of those projects were duplications of effort or downright useless.
The joke about the government is, if you have good enough press, neither of the above jokes matters.
Looking at the battles cited reminds me that a common analysis of The White Company is that it succeeds in making the reader cheer for bad guys perhaps the bad guys in the story (obs sf Steve Stirling etc.).
To the degree that Vietnam was a failure it was indeed a failure of the Best and Brightest -
- ( and in many respects it may not in fact have been ultimately a failure - see e.g. Pournelle
although I think MacNamara was correct in his memoirs that if the highest objective was to put a durable indigenous government in place that objective was impossible after Kennedy acquiesced in the killing of Diem - that may in retrospect not have been the best goal in the circumstances) -
The best and brightest seem to me to fail in a number of ways - the same people who failed later in Vietnam failed earlier in the Bay of Pigs - failed twice; once in conception combined with execution and I think also once in duty to their own - abandoning the Brigade when the putative rednecks of the Alabama Guard among others showed more honor to less effect. Some of the Ivy League types learned a few lessons some apparently didn't.
But my observation of pointy haired bosses as a type (not necessarily in management) is that they lack learning strategies for lessons that don't come easy to them. FREX a phb boss type may be fluent in many languages and all the history of art with honors from Wellesley and yet be so far computer illiterate as to not only be unable to learn but to deny the usefullness of computers - suggesting programming is a job for secretaries not for bright deserving people. What they fail in at first attempt they never learn.
I know Bush took a great American History sequence at Andover - I know he met the challenge of a fine department and able competition as a history major at Yale - I even have some idea of what he was exposed to at the Harvard Business School - and I am forced to admit he doesn't seem to be learning on the job.
OTOH, this morning Salon pointed me to a CBS news article:
"Buchanan says if Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry should win, then a “civil war” will immediately break-out for control of the Republican Party – neoconservatives verses conservatives."
The trouble is both scenarios have the infighting starting too late.
When I started reading your post, while still in the prolog, I had an overwhelming desire to start attributing your quotes:
"Spread your wings, unencumbered by fear. - Icarus
Which, of course, demonstrates your point.
That's great insight into GWB as the coddled underachiever.
A whole bunch of times now, Bush has been absolutely certain of his decisions, overflowing with faith—and dead wrong. So whatever it is he’s put his faith in, it’s something that’s telling him things that aren’t true.
On the allure of certainty or why the heck do people support GWB:
I'm currently reading God against the Gods by Thomas Kirsch and it feels horribly relevant to the current (world) situation. Reading it, I realized that the one thing that strict monotheism offers that polytheism cannot is the absolute certainty that one is following the one true way. In a complex world that is very seductive. Uncertainty is frightening. Unfortunately, the price for that certainty is intolerance. I don't think crusades were a good idea back in the middle ages. I don't think they're a good idea now.
Believing that God prompts your every decision is no guarantee that God will do so. If you abandon your responsibility for thought, judgement, research, and counsel, you’ll be left with maybe a few small, still promptings from God, and a whole lot of noisy promptings from your own will and desire.
This is where my grandmother used to come in with her lecture about how the devil took greater pride in leading a single faithful member of the flock astray, by taking advantage of their blind faith, than in all those who, through their own lack of faith, were already counted as his. Once that poor faithful soul had been led astray the first time, they were supposed to be easy meat the next time, and the time after that, unless they learned the lesson to stop and think about what they were doing, rather than following blindly what they hoped was divine guidance. Because Adam and Eve had acquired the knowledge of good and evil, we now had the responsibility to study, consider, and only then act, knowing that out own immediate desire might well be contrary to the virtuous choice...others who have been raised with similar lectures know the path this one takes.
Stripped of the religious clothing, we can take the devil's efforts as a metaphor for blind over-confidence and an insistence that the choice we want is the same thing as the best and wisest choice we can make. Self-doubt may be crippling, but failure to doubt, in the sense of never questioning one's self, may be self-destructive.
If I eat a piece of the scratch-baked chocolate cake a co-worker brought today, I may please myself, but will this, in view of my weight and the risks of hypertension and diabetes, be a wise choice? Especially if I follow it up with a second piece, and a third, because there's lots, and it's really good, and she's already said she doesn't want to have to carry it home. Overindulgence in cake may be a small matter, a bagatelle indeed compared to GWB's actions, but the same error: "Doing what I want because it feels right is a Good Thing" lies behind both. No matter how many people say the cake is really good.
Speaking of children of priviledge, I helped to found and sat on the board of a freenet at one point (mid-90s) - and had a very disconcerting conversation with the CFO of the company that I was working for. It ran something like:
CFO: "What's the point of this freenet thing, anyways?"
Me: "We're providing Internet access to people that can't afford to get online"
CFO: "What do you mean?"
Me: "Well - we provide free text-based accounts, as well as low cost recycled hardware, so that people can get online"
CFO: "Why? Everybody can afford to get a computer with a decent graphics card and monitor? I mean - even on a payment plan it's just a couple of pizzas a month - toss in a little bit more for Internet access. Text is just a waste of time."
... and the conversation went south from there, because he couldn't conceive of the idea that there were people to whom that was a totally non-trivial amount of money.
This plays into my belief that everybody should have the experience of barely having enough money to make ends meet (and that means "basic needs - food, shelter") - and of working in a menial, customer-facing job. Pfeh.
John, do please feel free to attribute those quotes.
Mayakda, if strict monotheism guaranteed you were following the one true path, most of the New Testament would never have been written. A major theme of the Epistles is that some fervent congregation of monotheists has fallen into error yet atain.
Fidelio, I like your grandmother's theology.
I just spent some time with relatives, some of whom are planning to vote for Bush. These were not rich people, nor were they in management, but they aspired to it -- and they were the kind who gullibly swallowed down that inspirational twaddle wholesale. What's scary is that you don't have to be a PHB to buy into the Bush myth; all you have to do is envy the PHB.
The next terrifying thing to think about is that they aren't going to learn. If Bush loses, or if Bush wins the election and continues to fall flat on his face in everything else he tries, his faith-based cheerleaders aren't going to blame him: they're going to blame us. Everyone who points out his flaws and brings up that annoying 'reality' stuff are traitors who have been building obstacles to his rightful triumph. We aren't team players. We don't have the can-do spirit. If the will to win is sufficient to win, then failure must be a consequence of a failure of our will, not a bad or impractical plan.
Look, here's the fundamental problem as I see it: language allows a person to lie to themselves and to others.
There is an empirical, objective, measurable world, and then there are words we use to either describe the world we are in, or to describe a fiction.
When words become more important than the objective world, problems start to occur.
"We're on a mission from God" is funny when The Blues Brothers say it, but not so funny when Holy Crusades are based on it, when terrorist recruiting depends on it, and when fear-mongering presidents use it to get reelected.
As I see it, Bush's simple problem is that he has told himself a fictional account of what the world looks like, and he BELIEVES it. Empirical evidence is not as important as his own beliefs.
I don't have a problem with religion and spirituality, unless such a belief is used to take a fairy-tale and elevate it to unquestionable truth in the face of empirical evidence to the contrary.
Does the sun go around the earth because you say so, or are you willing to look through the telescope and surrender the "truth" as you know it?
Weapon's inspectors kept saying "there's no WMD's", but Bush believed they were there.
That Bush would put his own beliefs above the empirical evidence points to a fatal flaw in his ability to make rational decisions.
It is not specific to Bush, though. History will show you a laundry list of people who were in power and who told some fictional tale and believed it in the face of objective evidence to the contrary. It's the basic formula of every witch-hunt that ever occurred in history.
Mayakda, if strict monotheism guaranteed you were following the one true path, most of the New Testament would never have been written.
And the Old Testament would be a lot shorter. There's a whole lot of pages on "prophets castigating the people for worshipping Baal et. al". I guess those must have been the free-thinkers. Always causing trouble.
Seriously, I think that's the initial hook though -- the one true path. After a while the reasonable people realize from life experience that that doesn't really sync with reality and they stray from true belief. They start entertaining dangerous thoughts of tolerance. At which point they must be weeded out. Cue the handy-dandy torture thread. That's always good for making the troublemakers confess to something.
Did anyone else look at all those motivational poster slogans and find themselves thinking of Loyal to the Group of Seventeen from The Book of the New Sun?
Did anyone else look at all those motivational poster slogans and find themselves thinking of Loyal to the Group of Seventeen from The Book of the New Sun?
Holy cow! No, but I would pay some serious cash for G17-themed motivational posters. How cool would that be?
"Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts!"
I like John Houghton's idea of attributing the motivational aphorisms.
By the way, am I a Bad Person for hallucinating an extra y in this one?
—It is the size of one's will which determines success.
*delurking*
What scares me even more is how attractive that idea sounds - how pleasant it would be to be so firmly convinced that I'm right that any failure is automatically someone else's fault. In the chaos my life has become, the total abdication of thought sounds like an excellent option.
*relurking*
I like your grandmother's theology.
She was an impressive woman. My grandfather was a small highway contractor in rural Missouri in the 1920s and 1930s. They moved about every two years, following the road projects. She was a devout Southern Baptist, who believed her family needed to be in church on Sunday, no matter what. The road-building took them to a small town where the only church was Catholic--so on Sunday, every Sunday as long as they lived in that town, there they were, all together in a pew, shaking hands with the somewhat amazed priest at the end of the service, and inviting him to dinner sometime soon. In the 1960s, when ecumenical services became all the rage, she was bemused by the fuss and controversy: "Aren't we all Christians, after all? It's just different flavors."
the one thing that strict monotheism offers that polytheism cannot is the absolute certainty that one is following the one true way. In a complex world that is very seductive. Uncertainty is frightening.
I think that's why people run amok, cluttering up religion with little niggling rules--the people John Scalzi has referred to on his blog as Leviticans (see http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/002675.html for details). The principal charges Jesus gives his followers are pretty difficult to follow through on (Whatsoever you do unto the least of these you do also unto Me, Love your neighbor as yourself, Judge not lest ye also be judged, all that Turn the other cheek stuff), so it's easier to worry about whether people consume alcohol, smoke, dance, wear appropriate clothing, and on and on and on. If you're following all the rules, you must be a good person, right? In all the fuss, it's possible to forget about the Big Rules, the ones that are hard. Very comforting for the anxious, that sort of thing.
Did anyone else look at all those motivational poster slogans and find themselves thinking of Loyal to the Group of Seventeen from The Book of the New Sun?
That's one thing they reminded me of, but I was more strongly reminded of historical authoritarian and fascistic slogans. Authoritarian thinking tends to strongly emphasize the ideas "will is all" and "acting instead of thinking" (as in "We?re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."). There are all too many historical examples, even outside the usual suspects - for example, the turn-of-the-last-century French military theory of élan, which could only somewhat unfairly be summarized as "if you believe strongly enough, the machine guns will not hurt you."
As always, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence has excellent explanations and case studies of this kind of mindset. The sense of entitlement Teresa refers to is there in full force.
I've always just figured that "will is all" means "I don't know what I'm doing."
These guys aspire to the condition of aristocracy.
As I read this post I kept thinking about AA, especially when I read the following quote:
'”Most successful people are good at identifying, very early, their strengths and weaknesses, at knowing themselves,” he told me not long ago. [...] "I don’t think the president really had to do that, because he always had someone there — his family or friends — to bail him out. I don’t think, on balance, that has served him well for the moment he’s in now as president. He never seems to have worked on his weaknesses.”'
Bush is an alcoholic who does not drink, am I correct? I have no way of knowing if he joined AA or not, obviously, and moreover I'm speaking from a position of only secondhand knowledge about AA (so I welcome corrections), but it seems like that program deals with a lot of these issues of will and control, with a philosophy almost exactly opposite to the PHB philosophy. Rather than saying "I can control my drinking with an act of will," it's a matter of accepting the reality that you CAN'T control it, and acting accordingly (choosing not to drink).
I guess my point is, this "act of will" stuff has probably led Bush into trouble before. It's unfortunate that this time, there's a whole nation to hit bottom.
The only thing more frightening than the bulldozer "I will MAKE me right" approach to life itself is how often it works.
For every PHB, there is his polar opposite, the doormat; the one who has discovered that life demands much less effort and worry if you just lie down and let the louder, noisier, aggressive..er folks just do what they want.
Funny. Four years ago I would never have cast the American people in that role.
The repeated phrase "mission from God" is giving me a Blues Brothers moment. Only without the music. Does anyone know if W can sing?
Last month, commenter Nea left the following on a thread on Slacktivist, and it's been haunting me ever since:
Think about it. The evangelists live in a paternalistic system - you are very far down from heaven, but God the Father will take care of you if you just do what he wants. You know what he wants to provide this salvation when the preachers tell you. Do what they say and it will all be all right in the end.
So then the whole thing gets shifted a few degrees when it hits politics, but it's the same thing. You are very far down from the ownership of a major company, but the bosses will take care of you if they just have the money to offer new jobs/open new plants/pay for training. You'll know that they need these extra tax incentives to provide these services when the Republicans tell you. Vote how they say and it will all be all right in the end.
The management may be ruling by force of will, but it works because that weird cultist mentality translates across so many lines. Shut up and do as you're told, and God/The Company/The Party will take care of you.
But there’s another one, even subtler, that I think Bush has fallen into: The desire to just be what you are, and do what you wish, and have it somehow turn out to be right.
Good grief, he's a Mary Sue.
It's a pity that Barbara Tuchman is no longer with us. I'm sure she'd add a new chapter to The March of Folly just for this administration.
I don't know if GW can sing, but he sure can dance!
So now we know what Mary Sues are like in the real world -- though the lives of the Roman Emperors should have tipped us off by now.
I started reading the motivational (ahem) quotes more closely.
—The fundamentals of a person are not in substance, but in spirit.
In college we used to claim that students of our university, being mostly geeks, were "all substance, no style", while the students of the rival university were "all style, no substance". Obviously that quote was written by one of them.
The despair.com link is hilarious, er, inspiring. It reminded me of my plan to write a motivational self-help book titled "Procrastinate your way to a Good Enough Life."
Every time I see motivational posters, I am irresistably reminded of despair.com, which sells the antithesis. I have several of these, and I usually have one up wherever I'm working, because regular motivational posters make me physically nauseous. Do people actually think those posters make a different in employee attitudes? The best thing you can say about them is that sometimes the picture's pretty!
As for President Bush, he makes me think of the study a while back that showed incompetent people don't know they're incompetent. I think you've hit the nail on the head; he's making decisions by the seat of his pants and refusing to acknowledge the possibility that he's wrong.
Caroline, I think your insights are valid. What I think you are saying is that Bush is, in Tweve Step slang terms, a "dry drunk". This is someone who has managed to control in some way thier addictive behavior, whithout ever recovering from the addiction itself. If an alcoholic, one might say the person is "dry" but not truly sober.
This has been discussed at some length with regard to the President. For example, Professor of Social Work Katherine van Wormer wrote in 2002:
What is the dry drunk syndrome? "Dry drunk" traits consist of:Clearly, George W. Bush has all these traits except exaggerated self importance. He may be pompous, especially with regard to international dealings, but his actual importance hardly can be exaggerated. His power, in fact, is such that if he collapses into paranoia, a large part of the world will collapse with him. Unfortunately, there are some indications of paranoia in statements such as the following: "We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends." The trait of projection is evidenced here as well, projection of the fact that we are ready to attack onto another nation which may not be so inclined.
- Exaggerated self-importance and pomposity
- Grandiose behavior
- A rigid, judgmental outlook
- Impatience
- Childish behavior
- Irresponsible behavior
- Irrational rationalization
- Projection
- Overreaction
I also makes you wonder, when you consider that the President's cognitive and verbal abilities appear to have degraded somewhat in the past decade.
Speaking of deteriorating cognitive and verbal abilities: "I" instead of "It" in my final sentence.
Ever hear or read this bit o' Shakespeare:
"This above all: To thine own self be true . . ."
. . . used as an affirmation, leaving off the next line which puts things in context?
". . . and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."
In other words, don't lie to yourself, don't pull the wool over your own eyes, don't fall for your own line of bullshit.
If you're a boy, or, especially, a young man, and people around you treat you like a little king, it's easy to end up believing that one's life is easy because one is especially virtuous. Much easier, and much more ego-satisfying, than believing that one is the recipient of undeserved privilege.
The corollary, of course, is that other people fail simply because they are lacking in virtue. If you're a white male, and you succeed, it's because of your own personal hard work and deservingness (is that a word?) If you're non-white or non-male or non-rich, and you fail, it's because you belong to a group of people that is somehow inferior (lazy, stupid, "don't really want to work," etc.)
One person's success (or perceived right to succeed) is built on a lot of other people's failure (or perceived lack of deservingness.) Funny how that works.
Quoth Laura: One person's success (or perceived right to succeed) is built on a lot of other people's failure (or perceived lack of deservingness.) Funny how that works.
Yet another price to be paid for our overly-esteemed Puritan forefathers. Predestination. Bah!
And yet we have the Catholic church coming down hard on the Catholic candidate who said (paraphrase) that faith without works were insufficient. Truly a strange turn of events when Roman Catholic Bishops turn their backs on good works in favor of a Calvinist world view.
Reading the Suskind article and assorted commentary on same, I've been struck by nothing so much as the long-ago remarks of a professor I had in a seminar on modern Chinese intellectual history, when he was discussing what he was pleased to term "the Chinese Voluntarists." What he meant was Chinese thinkers who were convinced that they could create a new (and inevitably glorious) future China through sheer force of will. Probably the most famous exemplar of this type was, of course, Mao Zedong, and I would think that the grim facts attendant to, say, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution serve well to highlight the dangers attached to that particular mindset.
Please, I beg, let no one imagine that I am trying to draw an equivalence between George W. Bush and Mao Zedong. I am not. But this talk of altering reality through force of will, and of possessing o'erweening faith in a desired outcome, can't help but spark some sobering comparisons and reflections.
But this talk of altering reality through force of will, and of possessing o'erweening faith in a desired outcome, can't help but spark some sobering comparisons and reflections.
Absolutely. As a text to accompany this seminar I'd recommend Orcinus' posts on the attributes of fascism. As I recall (and be warned I may be mangling his meaning horribly), one of the chief characteristics of the "force of will" crowd (fascists, authoritarians, what-have-you) is their philosophy is a transformative one. It requires that society be changed by their will - that's really the entire reason for their existence.
This is why the current administration's policies are so profoundly non-conservative. Real conservatives are willing to see society change when necessary, but are very uncomfortable with massive societal change being the norm (recall the old jibe that the Republican motto was "Don't just do something, stand there" - hardly applicable these days). The "force of will" philosophy requires, as the unnamed official quoted in Suskind's article explained, that you are always using your will to change something. What you have is a situation where those in power cannot leave well enough alone - they are leaning so far forward that unlesss they run to keep up with themselves, they fall over.
Did anyone else look at all those motivational poster slogans and find themselves thinking of Loyal to the Group of Seventeen from The Book of the New Sun?
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the venomous parodies of motivational literature in William Browning Spencer's _Resume with Monsters_ yet - the pamphlets advising ghouls not to eat their co-workers are especially droll.
Leigh Butler:
Somewhere on here or on Electrolite there is a comment by Graydon to the effect that one of the major problems with modern corprate orginizational practices is that it strongly conditions us to aquiensence and acceptance in the face of the tyranny by the most absurd.
I think this is one of the most penetrating things I've heard in quite a while, and it does much to explain the question of how we got this way, and our culture of helplessness in the face of things like the neo-cons neo aristocracy.
To thine own self be true and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
That's far more poetic and terse than my version.
;)
So, this is what the administration has said:
http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=17813
And every single word of it has turned out to be false, wrong, inaccurate, or an outright lie.
yet, when Bush is asked if he "made any mistakes" he says "No", because the fictional world he believes in is more real to him than the emperical evidence around him.
During the first presidential debate, Bush said something to the effect of "when they (Iraq) attacked us on 9-11", when it was Al-queda and men from Saudi Arabia who attacked us on 9-11.
Bush has told himself a fictional dream so real that he believes it in the face of any objective evidence.
Attributions for motivational posters:
?It is the size of one's will which determines success.
Sounds like Adolph Hitler to me.
What Dan Blum said regarding Orcinus' recent material on fascism; and while you're over there take a look at the post on education and the No Child Left Behind act (link in the URL spot on this comment, article posted on 15 October 2004). It speaks directly to what ... argh, somebody said and I can't find the comment now, so clearly the sanity gnomes have put my brain in the same place they hide my car keys and measuring spoons.
Education. Lessons. Sit still, shut up, do what you're told and don't ask questions. School as preparation for corporate employment as preparation for serfdom in this Bizarro-land sociopolitical structure that has somehow congealed where fluid democracy was a minute (or a century) ago.
Feh. I'm going to go drink coffee now and see if this flash of horrifying insight makes more sense and less panic when I'm firing all cylinders.
Yeah, a lot of this is almost right from Chapter 5 of George Lakoff's Moral Politics.
Moral Order = Natural Order
Being on top means deserving to be on top, physically and metaphysically (if there's much distinction).
Discipline is cardinal; which means absolute obedience.
. . . I'm not doing him justice, but if we ever build a worthy opponent to the Heritage Foundation ilk, he'll be hired.
I've always just figured that "will is all" means "I don't know what I'm doing."
Although it's also a fair summation of the financial strategy of Our Fearless Leader's base.
Just picture them all, sitting around waiting for their parents and grandparents to die.
Leigh Butler said:
Somewhere on here or on Electrolite there is a comment by Graydon to the effect that one of the major problems with modern corprate orginizational practices is that it strongly conditions us to aquiensence and acceptance in the face of the tyranny by the most absurd.
I think this is also quite true of our educational system, and one more reason why we homeschool. It was so obvious in kindergarten that they were training up little automatons -- you WILL lie flat on your back with your eyes closed at naptime, you WILL NOT work ahead in your book no matter how fascinating you find the subject, you will NEVER attempt to take home art supplies because art class was too short, yadda yadda yadda (or "n'at" in Pittsburghese :)). We're looking at a magnet residential high school for kids gifted in math and science, but we're hearing bad things about screened email and no direct access to phones, and we're not sure if the chance to work with other gifted kids on subjects she loves will outweigh our requirements for her personal freedom... I guess we're training up a cynical little anarchist. But we like her better than a lot of the public school kids she knows.
This reminds me an awful lot of poker. There are a lot of players who bet by "feel" or "instinct." They would vehemently deny being superstitious, but would just as vehemently assert that they can somehow "tell" when they're going to get lucky. And, of course, they always lose. Whereas those stodgy, unimaginative, by-the-book robots will rake in small but consistent winnings just by doing the math. Does anyone know if Bush likes to gamble?
Trent Goulding:
"Please, I beg, let no one imagine that I am trying to draw an equivalence between George W. Bush and Mao Zedong."
Mao was one of the greatest contemporary authors of poetry in the style of Classical Chinese poetry. Of course, that's because he executed most of the competition.
Good thing that Emperor Bush II does not believe that he can write Science Fiction, the way that Saddam believed that he could write Adventure Romance.
Oh, wait. You should know a little science, or at least read about it and talk to those who know it, before you can write Science Fiction. This White House is by far the most anti-science in history. Even Republican scientists are speaking out about this.
So, are we in a Bush-made world of Dark Fantasy, or Horror, or what?
I think, in a quiet sort of way, this is one of the most disquieting things I've read yet about the current political situation in the US.
I admit that I've been reading as little about it as I can because I'm not a US citizen, and I can't vote, and I get a lot of different viewpoints on the election because it does have a large international effect. There is -- outside of the US -- a sense that breath is being held, that waiting is being done, that you could hear a pin drop for the silence & tension.
"Does anyone know if W can sing?"
If he does, he relies on the backup vocalists to carry the melody.
The other night I watched A Bridge Too Far, based on the book by Cornelius Ryan.
Y'all recall this bit of dialog, as the final plans are being discussed in England?
Lt. Gen. Frederick "Boy" Browning: Only the weather can stop us now.
General Stanislaw Sosaboski: Weather. What of the Germans, General Browning?
and later on:
Lt. General Frederick "Boy" Browning: I've just been on to Monty. He's very proud and pleased.
Major General Urquhart: Pleased?
Lt. General Frederick "Boy" Browning: Of course. He thinks Market Garden was 90% successful.
Apropos of the power of will, has anyone yet read _A Handbook of American Prayer_, by Lucius Shepard?
Its premise is that prayers can be a mechanism to bring about circumstances by which the desired can be obtained. It combines the two American stories Xeger and Dave mention above in an interesting permutation.
The best parts of the book are the prayers (and the "joke" told by the man in Nogales). You can find one online, but the best, in my view, is the Prayer for Elisabeth Elko's Divorce Action.
Shepard, especially, in the first half of the book is brilliant as usual in his methodical description of characters' psychology.
Anyway, it's just the will thing that got me thinking.
*delurking*
James MacDonald quoted from near the end of A Bridge Too Far
Lt. General Frederick "Boy" Browning: I've just been on to Monty. He's very proud and pleased.
Major General Urquhart: Pleased?
Lt. General Frederick "Boy" Browning: Of course. He thinks Market Garden was 90% successful.
As bas as Monty's delusion is, I think what Browning says next is even more chilling. Urquahart asks him whether or not he thought the mission was successful, and Browning replies with something close to "Well, as you know, I always thought we tried to go a bridge too far."
Browning is lying with that line -- at no point in the movie was Browning anything other than a cheerleader for Monty's plan. Browning goes so far as to place on medical leave an intelligence analyst who has shown that some of the assumptions underlying the plan are faulty in a disastrous fashion. And yet, even literally staring at the evidence of disaster in the person of Urquhart, Browning is perfectly willing to make excuses for the failure, and, implicitly, for Monty.
That is the truly scary attitude. Bush and his sense of certainty could not have gotten very far if there were not far, far too many people with influence in the Republican Party who either shares his faith based view of the world or simply quietly go along. And that is the truly scary part, to me.
*relurking*
that comment about the Group of Seventeen made me reach for my copy of the Citadel of the Autarch ... but I found nothing as good as "behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts."
However, I remember that somewhere Severian notices that Ascian officers did not carry weapons, as if they regarded actual fighting with contempt. This now reminds me of our chickenhawk neo-cons, none of whom ever actually served in the army and most of whom went to great lengths to avoid the draft.
Our administration loves war, but they do indeed regard actual fighting with contempt -- look at the scorn they have heaped on Kerry, and the bandaids designed to mock the wounds that earned him his Purple Hearts.
Trent Goulding:
You weren't the only one reminded of Mao. Go here for Juan Cole's take on the Suskind profile:
http://www.juancole.com/2004_10_01_juancole_archive.html#109800207975930055
I can't help you with George W. Bush, though I observe that Tony Blair has been observed talking about how much his faith has helped him make these difficult decisions and how he knows in his heart he's making the right choice. I find it rather scary.
I too adore Despair.Com. Sadly, I didn't discover them soon enough in my career -- I'm now far too much of a PHB to get away with sticking a poster on my wall like 'Get To Work. You Aren't Being Paid To Believe In the Power of Your Dreams.' or 'Mediocrity. It Takes a Lot Less Time and Most People Won't Notice The Difference Until It's Too Late' or 'Irresponsibility. No Single Raindrop Believes It Is To Blame For the Flood.'
Interestingly, all three of those seem to me to say valuable and useful things, if not precisely motivational ones. I certainly believe in the irresponsibility one; that as single raindrops we each have our part to play in flood prevention. And I am a firm believer in mediocrity, by which I mean that all tasks should be done exactly well enough and no better.
I guess the one that the world needs to pin on the wall at the moment is Goals.
Plokta did some motivational posters for Novacon last year ('Interaction: Order can arise from the most chaotic system. Except this one' and so on). We ought to do some more for the Worldcon fan room. Only bigger, as befits the Worldcon.
I have to ask for clarification, since I have no idea what PHB means.
"Pointy-haired boss", as per Dilbert.
Erin Stafford:
Wow, that's eerie. Professor Cole said about what I was thinking. Coincidentally, he even teaches at the same university as the professor I mentioned, although that professor retired a few years ago.
Jonathon Van Post:
I dunno, the teacher of my Tang poetry seminar thought Mao was a pretty mediocre poet. He certainly wasn't fit to tie the sandals of, say, Li Bo, Du Fu, Bo Ju Yi, et al., though to be sure, they weren't modern imitators, but the original practitioners of the style.
I remember a line from one of David Mamet's books of essays back in the 80's. He basically said that Tyranny was creatiing chaos, and then offering yourself as the only was out. I've worked for several small businesses, and as soon as I've recognized that trait in an owner, I've gotten the hell out. Really hoped I'd never see it in a President.
Janet Croft: I think this is also quite true of our educational system, and one more reason why we homeschool. It was so obvious in kindergarten that they were training up little automatons -- you WILL lie flat on your back with your eyes closed at naptime, you WILL NOT work ahead in your book no matter how fascinating you find the subject, you will NEVER attempt to take home art supplies because art class was too short, yadda yadda yadda (or "n'at" in Pittsburghese :)).
You mean it wasn't just me? I always got chided for reading ahead in (usually history and English) textbooks! I couldn't see what the fuss was. It wasn't my fault the other students were (a) not interested enough, (b) not fast enough readers, or (c) better at pretending at (a) or (b). If I'd already finished the thing they wanted me to read (usually twice), I couldn't see why I had to sit there doing nothing instead of devouring the rest of the book.
Meanwhile. Despair.com *rocks.* If I am ever, ever allowed to put up posters again, I am so getting some of those. I wonder if I should send the President some...nah, they'd never make it.
xeger - only if they're required to do both at once. Somehow, the oppressiveness of retail doesn't fully sink in if you can afford to walk away from it.
I know one person (yes, only one - all my other friends are in the same economic class as I am) who would greatly benefit from having no choice other than to accept what work heaps on her back, without the option of leaving if she gets tired of it or if the schedule doesn't suit her.
My husband lost his job two weeks ago. He'd spent the past four years working for a small press publisher who has much in common with your description of a PHB. His regard for his employees hinged on their willingness to do what he asked without question, even if it was foolish and counterproductive, and to generate profit for him while asking nothing in return. The platitude posted by the door read, "This is the best place for the best people to work." Underneath this sign, in mute repudiation, sat a skeleton model that an employee had placed there.
Now I'm in the penultimate management class of my undergraduate accounting program. (The last one is about ethics.) This course in critical thinking started well, with chapters on fallacies and such; but it since devolved into management decision theory. The course certainly doesn't teach that team effort is of the team, by the team and for the management, but it certainly is based on the assumption that employees can and should be encouraged to give their all for the company with a few kind words.
I'll have to read the rest of this post after class tonight, but I wanted to spout off a bit about concepts from the beginning of it.
Oh, I did have another quick anecdote. On Sunday John and I were at Barnes & Noble. I was there to read my management text (a PDF), and John was taking notes for a screenplay. B&N was having an authors' event, which was to start at 7 PM. At 6:30 I swung by the tables of the dozen or so authors. Not all were set up yet, but it hardly mattered. They were talking to each other, or to relatives who had come along to help, or not at all. As best I could tell without actually picking up books or engaging people in conversation, none of the books were from major publishers. At least three appeared to be memoirs by retired military pilots. One was a kid's book by a newspaper copy editor. Not wanting to indulge in happy shop talk with self- or vanity-published people whose prospects of selling a lot of books were less than wonderful, I slunk away, vowing never to do a book signing until a "real" publisher puts my name on the cover.
Karen
Yoon Ha Lee: You mean it wasn't just me?
Nope. I was actually punished (by a nun, no less) for insisting that you could too subtract five from three.
Sundre: "Does anyone know if W can sing?"
Sure, just like Britney Spears.
The point of motivational posters isn't to give people good advice about business management; it's to flatter the egos of the executives who buy them. Here are some motivational posters you'll never see:
1. Photo: A wilderness EMT/rescue operation on the slopes of Mt. Washington. Slogan: Remember: In a crisis, it's the people below you who are going to save your sorry ass.
2. Photo: An artful, luminous photo of several pages of a legal document that have been accordion-pleated and partially shredded by a copier jam. Slogan: The copier will keep breaking down as long as the person whose job it is to estimate the necessary copying capacity doesn't talk to the people whose job it is to make the copies.
3. Photo: An earnest young employee with several three-ring binders and a sheaf of printouts spread out around him, working in front of a computer screen far into the night. Slogan: If you aren't training your staff to eventually take over your job, you aren't getting nearly as much work out of them as you might.
4. Photo: Closeup of a flock of ducks taking off from the surface of a lake. Slogan: Don't expect your best people to stick around for the next round of firings.
Zzedar wrote:
This reminds me an awful lot of poker. There are a lot of players who bet by "feel" or "instinct." They would vehemently deny being superstitious, but would just as vehemently assert that they can somehow "tell" when they're going to get lucky. And, of course, they always lose.
No - they win just often enough to convince themselves that their instinct must be correct, and commence to lose the next 10 rounds.
Way back up at the beginning of this thread, John Houghton said he found himself putting attributions on the motivational slogans, and gave one example:
Spread your wings, unencumbered by fear. --IcarusDave Bell added:
It is the size of one's will which determines success. --Adolf HitlerLest this promising game fall into desuetude, I offer:
Believe in yourself and anything becomes possible. --Harold StassenThe difference between the unattainable and the attainable lies in a person’s determination. --Jefferson Davis
The world has a habit of making room for those who know where they are going. --JFK Jr.
Many people have gone further than they thought they could because somebody else thought they could. --Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig
Comments on Motivation and doubt: