“Your death will stand as a landmark in the continuing struggle to liberate the parent land from the hands of the Roman imperialist aggressors, excluding those concerned with drainage, medicine, roads, housing, education, viniculture and any other Romans contributing to the welfare of Jews of both sexes and hermaphrodites.” – Life of Brian
Fun fact: the first winner of the Tour de France was a Panzerkampfwagen III.
A few years back I worked with a friend named Will. Will was one of the more creative people I’d ever worked with. One particular week, I knew he had a deadline to finish a rather significant project for our boss that Friday. It was Tuesday and I asked him if he had finished it, since he was goofing off enough to make George R.R. Martin’s writing progress look like a cocaine-snorting crotch-weasel. And cocaine-snorting crotch-weasels move pretty fast.
Will responded, “No. I think I’ll start on Thursday afternoon.”
In the conversation that followed Will admitted that work was pretty easy for him. “But if I wait until I have some important deadline, until I’m not sure that I have enough time to finish, then work gets pretty interesting.” He was completely serious. He didn’t really care if he got fired or in trouble – he just wanted life to be interesting. I thought about it, and, looking back, had noticed that I had done much the same thing. In fact, it’s so common, there are thousands of posters and jokes about it. I mean, if they threatened to kill one of my friends each hour I procrastinated, I could probably be pretty productive. But, you know that depends, too: which friend?
In retrospect, this points out that winning doesn’t make people happy, in and of itself. If that was the case, Will would have done his work in advance and goofed off later rather than earlier. That’s simply not the case. Most people do the same and procrastinate in some fashion. Statistics show anywhere from 25% to 95% of people procrastinate.
Procrastination will be my downfall. Emphasis on “will”.
That’s a wide enough range to be utterly meaningless. And since social scientists did the study, I trust it about as much as I trust drunken toddlers run the legislative branch of our government. Congressmen probably would agree with me, since I know that they generally really hate that kind of competition from intellectually superior people who are at least attempting to be potty trained.
Why procrastination?
I think there’s a lot of stress today in the workplace because the work is no longer optimized for the worker, it’s optimized for the lowest common denominator. Most companies want most processes to be able to be done by someone of limited *ahem* intellectual means. That makes the pool of qualified workers so much bigger, and they can pay lower wages. Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean that everyone who’s working a job that’s designed for an I.Q. of 85 has an I.Q. of 85 – far from it. But take someone of average (100) I.Q. and dump them in an 85 I.Q. job? There is more than a little potential for boredom.
And with that boredom can come mischief.
Horseplay? Quit foaling around.
The best possible job for anyone has certain characteristics – you know what’s expected of you. You have the tools to do it. Crucially, the job can’t be so easy that it’s trivial. The job should also not be so hard as to be frustrating. There’s that middle road, where you’re learning, where there’s enough challenge to keep you fully engaged in the work. Thankfully, many jobs have a ladder where as you increase your competence, you get increased responsibilities.
The downside, of course, is that the most skilled carpenter might make a really crappy carpenter foreman. The skill set from one spot in the organizational hierarchy to the next step up may not even be remotely related. The idea and general practice of promoting the best carpenter to foreman at least has one advantage – at least we know that the foreman is good at something. That something may not be leading people, but worst case, his people know he’s good with a hammer.
H.P. Lovecraft loved getting hickies, but would only get them from neck romancers.
I’ve mentioned the following story more than once, but I keep bringing it up because it was one of my “a-ha!” moments of understanding in life. In the very old HBO® series Dream On the protagonist was a literary agent. He had a secretary named Toby, who specialized in being unhelpful. In one episode, Toby was at work, playing a supermarket simulator on the company computer. She started as a bag boy.
“Cleanup in Aisle 9!” she screamed at one point in the episode. She showed an intensity playing the game that she never showed on her job. “I’ve been moved to cashier!” She was thrilled at the promotion.
Finally, her crowning achievement. Toby had won the game.
“I did it! I did it! I’m the manager!” she yelled, with excitement.
A long pause.
“Of a supermarket . . .”
Now her voice had dropped into a questioning tone.
“that doesn’t exist.” The last line was delivered with profound sadness and self-awareness that her day had been wasted.
Me: What’s up, glitches?
Toby, the secretary had been thoroughly engaged in the game in a way that was never available to her in real life. I’ve played a few video games since seeing that episode, but for the most part that one line stripped them bare to me: “Manager . . . of a supermarket . . . that doesn’t exist.” It showed that her victory was as hollow to her as the skull of a congresswoman from New York.
Since many jobs have been defined downward in so many ways, I can certainly see the rise of gaming. Gaming sells the experience people want and need. Good games provide a tutorial system to show you how to use the controls. They then run you through a series of challenges that teach you to be more competent with the in-game systems and controls, and provide tools that are in many cases only barely adequate for the job, requiring focus and concentration for you to succeed. Winning the game requires an investment of work, study, concentration, focus, and control. And $60.
Games provide the challenges that work really should be providing to the younger generation. They often have tools and abilities that far exceed what their job should provide. How do they cope? Killing cops, stealing cars, shooting radioactive zombie cowboys. But eventually you have to go home so you can play your game that you paid $60 for.
Gaming is popular because humans are machines built to compete. If life offers sufficient competition to keep us interested? Fine. But if living standards are great and everything is going well, but the people aren’t challenged? Hello, World War One. There was simply no reason for Europe to descend into that madness other than things were going well and the people were rich and bored.
If you survive assault, pepper spray, and mustard gas, are you a seasoned veteran?
Easy success is boredom. What happens to a society, a world, where success is set on easy? It breeds discontent. We see that in Europe now. Germany was nice and happy and reunited and things were going well. Boring.
Here’s an idea! Let’s import a bunch of foreigners. That should spice things up! Foreigners now make up 12.8% of the population, but commit 34.7% of the crimes, according to the Wall Street Journal®. Why do they commit the crimes? I’m pretty sure I don’t care. But why would Germany want to import a population that commits 30% of the murders and over 41% of the burglaries? They were bored. Things were going too well.
Normally, when things were going too well, Germany would fire up the panzers and take a trip west, but that turned out just to be too easy. And I like giving the French a hard time – I get more visitors from Malta (Want Some Short Term Gain and Long Term Pain? Also, Malta.) than from France. And the Germans certainly couldn’t take over Malta, mainly because the distance to Malta isn’t measured in panzers per baguette.
I recently read a book about French war heroes. That was an inspiring six pages.
But if you have the difficulty of your society set too hard? Riots and revolution and turning into a tyrannical dictatorship. The difficulty is no easier, but at least you get brainwashing and random executions, so there’s that.
Western Civilization has been fairly stable is that it’s built on two fairly strong foundations – capitalism and hierarchy.
Crony capitalism is inevitable. If I were to say “in a properly functioning capitalist society” I’d be no better than the Leftist weasels that lament that their particular brand of Hell on Earth has never been tried. No. Capitalism in the United States isn’t fair, and the rich get to make a lot of the rules and restrict competition. But you have the ability to join them. The system isn’t so rigged that mobility is impossible. And you can certainly trace out a comfortable life, especially if you’re born rich.
But capitalism really does provide competition – it’s hard to dominate a system (unless your name is Bezos) that is so huge, just like Jeff’s mistresses butt. It’s a game of nearly infinite complexity. You can play as hard and as long as you want on so many different angles. That leads to stability.
The other factor leading to stability is hierarchy. Men, left alone, will soon develop a hierarchy. They want the hierarchy. It gives them a place. It creates (generally) healthy competition to reach the top, unless your name is Macbeth. That hierarchy is often replicated in structures across the country – from homeowners associations at the very bottom, to Elon Musk at the very top.
Sure, there is only one Elon, but you can live in the middle to upper half of the hierarchy without having to even have a job. There are many activities that pay nothing and lead to huge amounts of mojo. Musician. Biker. Actor waiter.
Blogger.
And, yes, there are days when I put off things, too. I’ve had this one project I need to do at work. I’ve had it since July. It’s due next Friday.
Guess I should be starting that one pretty soon . . . .
