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.]

Posted October 19, 2004 12:08 PM by xeger

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...)

Posted October 19, 2004 12:27 PM by Greg

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 12:32 PM by Dave Lartigue

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...

Posted October 19, 2004 12:40 PM by Randolph Fritz

...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.

Posted October 19, 2004 12:55 PM by Carrie

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."

Posted October 19, 2004 1:06 PM by Kevin Marks

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 1:09 PM by veejane

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 1:11 PM by Clark E Myers

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 1:14 PM by John Houghton

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 1:18 PM by mayakda

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 1:32 PM by fidelio

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 1:45 PM by xeger

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 1:49 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 2:05 PM by PZ Myers

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 2:12 PM by Greg London

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 2:15 PM by mayakda

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?

Posted October 19, 2004 2:19 PM by Avram

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!"

Posted October 19, 2004 2:28 PM by Alex Cohen

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 2:30 PM by Q. Pheevr

*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*

Posted October 19, 2004 2:32 PM by Jeremy Preacher

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 2:37 PM by fidelio

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 2:39 PM by Dan Blum

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:07 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:08 PM by Caroline

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:15 PM by Leigh Butler

The repeated phrase "mission from God" is giving me a Blues Brothers moment. Only without the music. Does anyone know if W can sing?

Posted October 19, 2004 3:15 PM by sundre

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:16 PM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:20 PM by Kate Nepveu

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:20 PM by Larry Brennan

I don't know if GW can sing, but he sure can dance!

Posted October 19, 2004 3:21 PM by JamesG

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:22 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

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."

Posted October 19, 2004 3:27 PM by mayakda

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:27 PM by tiercel

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:

• Exaggerated self-importance and pomposity
• Grandiose behavior
• A rigid, judgmental outlook
• Impatience
• Childish behavior
• Irresponsible behavior
• Irrational rationalization
• Projection
• Overreaction

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.

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:32 PM by Claude Muncey

Speaking of deteriorating cognitive and verbal abilities: "I" instead of "It" in my final sentence.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:35 PM by Claude Muncey

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:36 PM by Stefan Jones

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:46 PM by Laura Roberts

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:54 PM by Larry Brennan

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 3:56 PM by Trent Goulding

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 4:17 PM by Dan Blum

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 4:35 PM by Henry

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 4:38 PM by James Angove

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 4:42 PM by Greg London

Attributions for motivational posters:

?It is the size of one's will which determines success.

Sounds like Adolph Hitler to me.

Posted October 19, 2004 4:53 PM by Dave Bell

Bless you.

Posted October 19, 2004 4:57 PM by julia

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 5:03 PM by Thena

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 5:08 PM by Neil Rest

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 5:10 PM by julia

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 5:14 PM by Janet Croft

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?

Posted October 19, 2004 5:16 PM by Zzedar

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?

Posted October 19, 2004 5:33 PM by Jonathan Vos Post

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 5:42 PM by Michelle Sagara

"Does anyone know if W can sing?"

If he does, he relies on the backup vocalists to carry the melody.

Posted October 19, 2004 6:00 PM by Linkmeister

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 6:11 PM by James D. Macdonald

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 6:14 PM by novalis

*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*

Posted October 19, 2004 6:36 PM by kevin

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 6:37 PM by Diana

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

Posted October 19, 2004 6:41 PM by Erin Stafford

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 7:06 PM by Alison Scott

I have to ask for clarification, since I have no idea what PHB means.

Posted October 19, 2004 7:43 PM by Ter Matthies

"Pointy-haired boss", as per Dilbert.

Posted October 19, 2004 7:44 PM by Eric Sadoyama

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 7:46 PM by Trent Goulding

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 7:47 PM by Mary R

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 7:53 PM by Yoon Ha Lee

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 7:54 PM by Alice Keezer

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

Posted October 19, 2004 7:58 PM by Karen Funk Blocher

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 8:01 PM by Larry Brennan

Sundre: "Does anyone know if W can sing?"

Sure, just like Britney Spears.

Posted October 19, 2004 8:09 PM by Marilee

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 8:13 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

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.

Posted October 19, 2004 8:44 PM by Nathan

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. --Icarus

It is the size of one's will which determines success. --Adolf Hitler

Believe in yourself and anything becomes possible. --Harold Stassen

The 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

Posted October 19, 2004 8:49 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

You have to know you can win. You have to think you can win. You have to feel you can win. --George Armstrong Custer

Posted October 19, 2004 8:51 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

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.

Wow, did you used to work for my company? My company's official policy is: "knowledge is power"

If you share information you run the risk of losing power. The only appropriate time to share information is just before the project goes south so the blame can be assigned appropriately.

I have actually have actually been reprimanded for sharing too much information with the people who work below me.

Posted October 19, 2004 8:58 PM by JamesG

We all live in our heads, in the world of imagination, as we must; the world is too big to fit in anybody's head.

That place of imagination is a place of magic, where things can be -- or seem that they can be -- accomplished through will alone, by the simple fact of desire. It is the hard unbending matter of the tangible world that demands work, and effort, and imposes risk. I would say that it is the effort of moving to dwell as much as one may in the world of substance that makes one able to claim mature judgement and an adult state.

If one is protected, free or freed from need above convenience, the connection can be cut, and there will be the seeming of a great burden laid down.

For a little while; while the strength lasts, and the will lasts with it, to offer and enact that protection.

ða se eorl ongan for his ofermode alyfan landes to fela laþere ðeode

then the earl in his overmastering pride actually yielded ground to the enemy, as he should not have done

Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,
mod sceal þe mare þe ure maegen lytlað.

Posted October 19, 2004 9:06 PM by Graydon

Greg London wrote: "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."

Actually, Bush said "the enemy attacked us".

I have a hunch that "the Enemy" is Christian Right code for Satan, much like Bush's mention of Dred Scott was Christian Right code for Roe v. Wade.

In this interpretation, The Enemy is Satan, and Saddam and Osama are instruments of Satan, implicitly cooperative. Thus Iraq becomes a valid target in the War on Terror.

Kerry wasn't up on the code, so he called Bush on his apparent blame of Iraq for 9/11.

Then again, it's entirely possible that the "enemy" thing isn't Christian Right code, but only an element in Bush's own conception of reality. Which is more worrisome.

It's a really bad thing when the guy who controls the nuclear arsenal of the nation has disowned reality-based decisionmaking.

Posted October 19, 2004 9:12 PM by Jon H

I can't believe they ceded us "reality-based": Hello, Mensheviks!

Posted October 19, 2004 9:15 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Graydon, I've long had Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare þe ure maegen lytlað buried in the template code for this weblog.

Posted October 19, 2004 9:21 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak, becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong,/i>

NYU pick a year '35 or '36

Posted October 19, 2004 9:40 PM by Clark E Myers

Teresa --

I could not doubt it.

I could wish to doubt that it's that time again, but I can doubt such doubts no longer.

Posted October 19, 2004 9:42 PM by Graydon

Why NYU?

I'd have said:

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak, becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong. --Belgium

Posted October 19, 2004 9:45 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Crap! for every five minutes I spend here, I spend
fifteen minutes looking obscure references up on
Google. Look, people, I don't want to have to
THINK, alright?!? Just give me the friggen answers!

;)

Empiricism to Bush:
Get OFF the nuclear warhead!
-- Colonel William Sharp ("Armageddon")

Bush to Empiricism:
"I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when
I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my
brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine
years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss"
-- Cypher ("The Matrix")

Posted October 19, 2004 9:49 PM by Greg London

Many people have gone further than they thought they could because somebody else thought they could

obs sf 1632
the officer found himself another employer. The Tsar. Russia, he thought, would be far enough

Posted October 19, 2004 9:55 PM by Clark E Myers

Many people have gone further than they thought they could because somebody else thought they could

obs sf 1632
the officer found himself another employer. The Tsar. Russia, he thought, would be far enough

Posted October 19, 2004 9:56 PM by Clark E Myers

I wonder if our president has watched Dr. Strangelove? I saw it for the first time a few months ago. I couldn't stop laughing. Then I *dared* not stop laughing because otherwise I'd start crying. Or something like that.

Posted October 19, 2004 9:59 PM by Yoon Ha Lee

The attribution game is slightly spoiled for me because I know where this one comes from:

--The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

It is the seldom-quoted Second Law of Sir Arthur Clarke, from Profiles of the Future.

Not that it fails to harmonize with the other aphorisms Teresa has provided, but it is a bit out of its context (technological prediction). And it originates with one of Us.

The other, more familiar, laws are the First,

When a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.

and the popular Third,

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Posted October 19, 2004 10:01 PM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

The fundamentals of a person are not in substance, but in spirit W.C. Fields (not as sometimes said Eben Flood)

Posted October 19, 2004 10:02 PM by Clark E Myers

You can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed Vince Lombardi (one of the original 7 blocks of granite)

Posted October 19, 2004 10:04 PM by Clark E Myers

Well, I guessed that that little blast of Old English had to be from some epic poem, but alas my personal self-education in the humanities only includes such things in translation.

It turns out that Google indexes thorns and such quite well, so I was able to find the translation for Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare þe ure maegen lytlað. An inspiring sentiment, indeed.

Once again, I have learned something here. Thank you.

Posted October 19, 2004 10:07 PM by Larry Brennan

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another. 47 Ronin

Posted October 19, 2004 10:08 PM by Clark E Myers

Fordham - 7 Blocks of Granite being football players - ruined NYU's season one year '35 and NYU returned the favor the following year '36 see Grantland Rice, Damon Runyon et al..

Posted October 19, 2004 10:15 PM by Clark E Myers

You're right, Bill; it's different when it's one of Ours. What's painful is the context in which they use it.

Try this:

What would you not attempt to achieve, if you knew it was impossible to fail? --Trofim Denisovich Lysenko

Posted October 19, 2004 10:17 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The world has a habit of making room for those who know where they are going Robert F. Scott

Posted October 19, 2004 10:31 PM by Clark E Myers

Teresa, I wish I'd had your proposed posters when I was in the corporate workforce. *sigh*

Parlor games!

There is only one success: to be able to live your life in your own way. -- Paul Gaugin

The distance between a person’s dreams and their accomplishments can only be measured by their desire. -- Casanova

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason -- obviously, G. W. Bush

Welcome the chores that make you go beyond yourself. -- Cinderella's stepmother

When a team makes a commitment to act as one, the sky’s the limit. -- Tower of Babel construction team

Together we are winners. -- pick a failed merger. So many to choose from!

Posted October 19, 2004 10:31 PM by Darice

Together we are winners is clearly Unisys to the power of 2

Posted October 19, 2004 10:33 PM by Clark E Myers

Many people have gone further than they thought they could because somebody else thought they could

Jude Fawley

Posted October 19, 2004 10:43 PM by Clark E Myers

I am currently doing some freelance for a company (no, not the one I do full-time freelance for, if that's not an oxymoron) which is the PHB.

Worse yet, one day my contact there recommended I need a motivational poster in my office to "better understand XYZ company" and how they "work outside the box" (code for: We decide what's right and how to do it, no matter that it's wrong and broken, and will beat you down if you don't agree with us by telling you that you're "uncreative" and "not up to our challenging standards" if you don't agree with our Way).

I suggested a poster from Despair. He didn't get it.

By the way, on the term "reality-based" used in Suskind's article at the NYT: I've been hearing this same catch-phrase for the last year from XYZ company, and they're very much so not Bushies. Methinks it is a catch-phrase from yet another Managerial Technique. It smells like one from a mile away.

Posted October 19, 2004 10:46 PM by Nancy Hanger

It is a sad fact that regardless of effort or talent, second place really means you are first in a long line of losers

Esau

Posted October 19, 2004 10:50 PM by Clark E Myers

Vision is not seeing things as they are but as they will be. - Cassandra

Victory goes to the man whose desire is strongest. - Paris (although really at least half of those could be attributed to him, feckless as he was)

Posted October 19, 2004 10:50 PM by Dan Blum

It is the size of one’s will which determines success
Norman F. Dacy (Dacey)

Posted October 19, 2004 10:56 PM by Clark E Myers

Clark wrote:

Together we are winners is clearly Unisys to the power of 2

I have yet to forget the multi-page memo instructing everybody on how to properly format 'unisys' - including the 'i', which must always be lower case, not upper case, and in a font similar to courier, with serifs. Motivational reading, indeed.

Posted October 19, 2004 10:59 PM by xeger

The desire to just be what you are, and do what you wish, and have it somehow turn out to be right.

That sounds like my main beef with much of Gordon Dickson's work: the way the plot and the rest of the universe reshape themselves so that whatever the hero did is Right, and whoever forgets their qualms and accepts this shares in the Rightness. It's almost Brechtian: "So divide up those in darkness / From the ones who walk in light / Light 'em up boys, there's your picture / Drop the shadows out of sight."
Kate: Mary Sue is a great capsule, and wakes up a long-forgotten memory of my mother saying that Necromancer(?) read like a small man trying to pretend he was big. As TNH and others have suggested, every now and then he has a moment's realization of just how small he is, and gets that deer-in-the-headlights look -- then he suppresses it with a line like -"The thing about being President is I don't have to answer questions."- and he's back in his fantasy.

The approach of the "reality-based community" isn't unprecedented; recall Theodore Roosevelt's "I took Panama, built the Canal, and left Congress -- not to debate the Canal but to debate me." Is it a marker of this administration that all of its actions in this vein are destructive rather than constructive? Or have they simply not figured out that this is 2000 instead of 1900?

PZ Myers: "But most men would rather dream of being rich rather than facing the reality of being poor -- [crescendo] and that is why they will follow us [music] To the Right!..." (Dickinson and the Conservatives, in 1776)

Laura Roberts: The corollary, of course, is that other people fail simply because they are lacking in virtue. Oh yes. That philosophy got named "Social Darwinism" in the 19th century, but it was around long before and is around still. (Another of my mother's observations, that Christian Science (among which she grew up) was a religion of the well-off, who could take their good health as a sign of divine favor and not of being able to eat, sleep, and clothe themselves well.)

Is it a violation of Godwin's law to observe that the talk of transforming by "will" recalls Triumph of the Will?

Posted October 19, 2004 11:32 PM by CHip

Speaking of Bush and religion, has anyone seen the online petition from some members of the United Methodist Church for Bush and Cheney to repent?

Obviously, this will have the same effect as all online petitions: none at all. Still, the language is really interesting, especially the conclusion. To quote:

We, the undersigned, are also very much disturbed by President Bush's many references to the significance of Christian faith in the decisions that he has made as President of the United States. George W. Bush has called Jesus his "favorite philosopher", said that Jesus changed his life, and that his decisions are often guided by prayer. In fact, we feel that most of his actions as president have directly contradicted the philosophy of Jesus. Jesus said to feed, clothe, and shelter the "least of these", not to starve, strip, and bomb them.

Points for excellent use of rhetoric, if nothing else.

Also, somebody tried to have John Kerry excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Every day I get a little more scared of what's going on in this country.

So I'm going to play the attribution game to cheer me up.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another. - anyone who's played an rpg

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak, becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong - Stalin

It is a sad fact that regardless of effort or talent, second place really means you are first in a long line of losers. - I'm not attributing this one; I'm just including it to express my disbelief. This is a motivational poster? What's the picture of, a noose?

Finally, when I need inspiring I think of the following:
When all else fails, pour a pint of Guinness in the gas tank, advance the spark 20 degrees, cry "God save the Queen!" and pull the starter knob. (from the MG "Series MGA" workshop manual).

Posted October 19, 2004 11:34 PM by tiercel

veejane wrote (some time ago):

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.

-- But the thing is that Gatsby isn't the gospel text, it's a *critique* of the myth.

That said, this makes me think of this:

"The distance between a person’s dreams and their accomplishments can only be measured by their desire." -- Jay Gatsby

SF

Posted October 19, 2004 11:56 PM by Stephen Frug

So does this mean we now know who John Galt is?

Historical note: General Browning said "But sir, I think we might be going a bridge too far" to Montgomery during the final planning for Market-Garden, ten days before the Airborne took off. The film moves this to the aftermath for dramatic effect. Browning seems to have set his doubts aside, but he didn't lie about them. Montgomery is another matter, but for once I won't digress.

Oh, the issue at hand. I commented on this here, on 10 May, in the "Arkhangel grieves..." thread.

Posted October 20, 2004 12:04 AM by John M. Ford

Does She Think Your Will is Big Enough?

Try today's BEST will enhancement product for FIFTY PERCENT OFF!!!

Soon your desires will be her only reality!!

Alex

Posted October 20, 2004 12:05 AM by Alex

There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others. -- Victor Frankenstein

Many people have gone further than they thought they could because somebody else thought they could. -- Odysseus

You can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed. -- Alcibiades

Posted October 20, 2004 12:24 AM by Avram

*delurking*

The other thing one tends to forget when quoting "To thine own self be true" is that it's the closing to a completely pompous, ridiculous, and extremely comic speech by Polonius. No one is supposed to take that seriously.

*relurking*

Posted October 20, 2004 12:44 AM by Kate

Trent Goulding:

You're right. But Mao had the critics saying what I said. Or else!

I can't actually read Chinese, but some poems have been so often translated that I have published a number of transliterations of, for instance, Su Tung-po, interpolating a new one from a set where one is supposedly the most literally accurate, one is said to have captured the atmosphere, one the rhythm, and so forth. I corresponded with Alan Ginsberg about this, and did a poetry reading with him once. The genre is a form of hypertext, as one's allusions are to older poems, which themselves allude to still older poems, and so on recursively. I also claim to be the first true (inentional explicitly declared) author of intentional hyperpoetry, in venues such as Datamation, back in the 1970s.

There have been Poet-Presidents before, with mixed results.

Since Bush proudly declares that he doesn't read newspapers, he may be immune to literary criticism. Which, I think, was near my point.

Posted October 20, 2004 12:51 AM by Jonathan Vos Post

Trent Goulding:

You're right. But Mao had the critics saying what I said. Or else!

I can't actually read Chinese, but some poems have been so often translated that I have published a number of transliterations of, for instance, Su Tung-po, interpolating a new one from a set where one is supposedly the most literally accurate, one is said to h