Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
“Jen, if this needle goes past here, you’re fired. Does that make you feel stressed at all? Does it? Jen? Are you sure? Jen? Does it? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?” – IT Crowd
Playing triangle in a band is something a Jamaican won’t do, mon. It stresses them out to be responsible for every ting.
There is a love/hate relationship with the Holidays. By the Holidays, I really mean Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve – and not any of the other 107 holidays in November or 69 holidays in December our crack Wilder research team was able to find with one Google® search. There are (really) days like National Cookie Day on December 4, International Ninja Day on December 5, and National Salesperson Day on December 13. National Salesperson Day? I’m not buying that one.
One reason we love the Holidays is how we looked forward to them when we were kids. The Holidays meant, at the minimum, time off from school. In the American Dream Household®, there was time for snowmen, sledding, and mugs of hot chocolate while we sang Christmas carols for our neighbors. On top of all of that, there was the smell of turkey on Thanksgiving, the tantalizing secrets of the wrapped mysteries under the Christmas tree, and the miracle of pulling Uncle Vern’s finger.
Okay, our neighbors had concertina wire and watch towers, so we couldn’t get within a quarter mile of their houses without the password. I’m sure we would have belted out a few Christmas carols if they hadn’t fired those warning shots.
I did accomplish one thing last Christmas. I won the Netflix® marathon.
As I got older, the hate part of the Holidays begins to show up: stress from bills, stress from dealing with corporate Christmas parties, stress from having to decide which sets of parents get which visits on which days, stress from having to deal with relatives that you’d rather never see again, and stress from hiding the bodies of those relatives you will never see again.
Some people get hit so badly with this stress that they actually panic. And panic can be a serious mental illness, not carefree and happy go lucky like the ones I have. But I gave up on being upset at Christmas years ago.
I’ve learned the secret: I don’t care.
I will say, the FBI looked more competent in Die Hard than they have for the last three years . . . .
Okay, that’s not entirely true, I do care. But I choose what I care about. And I choose what I don’t care about.
You see, the old line that “Aging is a matter of mind. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter,” slightly modified, applies here as well. I’ll customize it a bit: “Holidays: If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
I think the biggest problem that most people have is high standards. High standards are a gateway to constant disappointment. If your life is wrapped around making the holiday perfect, then you’ll stress yourself out by trying to make the holiday perfect. And then? When you fail to achieve perfection? Your stress will increase that much more. Your stress might then turn from disappointment to depression, which I admire, because that shows real dedication that you don’t seen in those millennial kids nowadays.
As bad as that quest for perfection is, it can be even worse than that – often people want to view perfection not through their own standards, but through the views of other people. Now, on top of trying to meet your standards, you have to imagine what the standards of other people might be, and try to figure out how to meet those as well. It’s why Bill Clinton doesn’t do threesomes – if he wanted to disappoint two people at the same time, he could have just taken Hillary out for dinner.
Bill was especially disappointed when Hillary lost because he realized he wouldn’t get a fresh batch of interns.
However, you can make the conscious choice to not choose perfection. What happens if you don’t care if the turkey isn’t perfect? What happens if you don’t care if other people are upset?
Well, nothing.
Certainly, there’s something on my list above from bills to parties to relatives that is (or was) on your list. Me? Sure, I’ve had a disappointment or two, and yes, I’ve gotten stressed a time or two. But not recently.
If you’re feeling stressed at the holidays, the Internet will tell you to do lots of things. The top five tips (really!) on one particular site?
Take a walk in the sunlight.
Smell citrus.
Take yet another walk. (Yes, it was item one, and also item three.)
Take a supplement.
Squeeze between your thumb and forefinger.
Yes. These will all certainly help – help a journalist on a deadline come up with a “unique” take on holiday stress. I’ll admit, out of the 27 or so tips, there were some good ones. But when “Take a whiff of citrus” is in your top two ideas for dealing with stress? That’s almost as bad an idea as when they decided to put an “s” in lisp.
A journalist, an anthropologist, and a philosopher walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey Anderson, still no job?”
Between now and the New Year, we’ll probably not get farther than 90 miles from the house, and that will be to celebrate Penultimate Day (Happy Penultimate Day 2018, and the Biggest Story of 2018: Societal Trust). We’ll spend time with people we like, and not people we have to spend time with.
Might there be some stress? Sure. That happens. But only if I want it to.
“Well, Saddam owed us money.” – Arrested Development
Maybe I should get more sleep.
It’s nearly Thanksgiving, and the next few weeks will be busy. Now that The Boy is off at college and no longer engaged in half a dozen activities, we’re down to just having to chase Pugsley around. Not so busy that there won’t be a full slate of posts – those are planned for the next few weeks, barring a change based on current events or me being distracted by shiny objects.
Today, though, I thought I’d change it up a bit, so here are a few random thoughts on business, economics, and wealth.
The last economic crash was about a housing bubble. The next economic crash will be about our “everything” bubble where money flows faster to chase smaller and smaller returns.
The biggest thing to crash after the next bubble pops will be money. It’s never fun when the value of money drops to zero, since having a little inflation is like being a little pregnant – not much happens at the beginning, but by the end everyone is yelling and screaming and covered in blood.
The next economic crash will be the biggest in our lives.
Or not. I’ve been wrong before.
But I still think 2025 will be interesting.
Most jobs don’t require thinking nowadays – they are a set of procedures and rules based on the lowest common denominator employee. The best jobs like this are at the DMV, which at least allow you to be mean and unpleasant, plus government benefits.
Jobs that don’t require thinking can be paid at the lowest possible wage. If you’re lucky enough to be hired at Old MacDonald’s farm, I hope you can rise to the C-I-E-I-O position, but you’ll have to be out standing in your field.
Businesses that do things immorally don’t automatically fail because they do things immorally – many immoral and even evil businesses flourish. It’s only in the movies that the good guys always win.
When I gave career advice to The Boy, I advised him to build expertise and skills in things that couldn’t be done over the Internet or by an outsourced employee working in a country where the native language consists only of vowels, grunts, and humming noises but yet has 355 terms for “waddle”.
Always be worth more to your company than your company is paying you.
“What have you done for me lately?” is a good and fair question from any boss.
The second mouse gets the cheese in the trap. No, I’m not going first.
If it’s choosing between money and honor, choose honor. The bills might be more difficult to pay, but at least you can look yourself in the mirror. Until the power company cuts the electricity.
Seriously though, choose honor.
It’s the risk that you don’t take that you’ll regret. But you only hear successful people say that.
Never build a business on what you love, since no one cares about medieval Norse poetry. Build a business on what you do that other people love and will pay for. You’ll learn to love it.
Capitalism works great to allocate spoils in an expanding market. Capitalism fails in a contracting one. There’s nothing easy about the transition.
Being short of money and optimistic about the future is better than having lots of cash and being pessimistic.
Money can’t make you happy, but you can avoid most of life’s miseries by having a few hundred thousand dollars. Not every one of life’s miseries, but most of them.
Whenever anyone says it’s not about the money, it’s really about the money.
Whenever anyone says cost is no object, you can expect that statement to be proven false once the estimates arrive. Make them pay in advance.
The reward for work well done is more work. This is actually a pretty good deal – we tend to buy video games built around this same premise.
The rewards aren’t linear – the closer to the top, the greater the rewards. But you have to fight the big boss at the end before you retire.
Great bosses are rarer than you might imagine. Most bosses are okay. Some are awful.
The worst kind of boss is a weak boss. They will praise you when you don’t deserve it and sell you out when you don’t.
Teamwork makes it easy to blame someone else.
In America, when two men meet, they ask “What do you do?” Too often we equate ourselves with “what we do,” while forgetting we get to choose who we are. Unless you’re Johnny Depp, in which case you are stuck being Johnny Depp.
If you find yourself dreading the alarm clock and not wanting to go to work you go anyway. It’s your job. If it’s too much? Find another job or retire.
True story: a friend of mine had a sister that decided to retire one day when she was about 30. She was shocked when the checks stopped coming, she seemed to think that when you retired, the company had to keep paying you. I think she’s a Bernie® voter now.
Me? I’m trying to start thinking about retirement before my boss starts thinking about my retirement.
When I was first hired into a job, I heard a statistic that 70% of a typical workday for a typical employee was unproductive. I was shocked that the figure was so high.
Now, after working for years, I’m shocked that the figure is so low. I tried to come up with jokes about lazy people, but they just won’t work.
Meetings often happen just because they’re on the schedule. Look like you’re paying attention and don’t sleep, no matter how quickly it makes the meeting go.
I had a friend who worked at the Unemployment Department who got fired. He still had to show up the next day.
“Resistance fighters, humans, sent back from the future by John. And what? Are they manning some kind of apocalyptic paramilitary convenience store filled with fake IDs and guns and money?” – Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
That also explains why I have a piano player who is only a foot tall in the house. Stupid genie.
The Mrs. and I talked for a while about why this was. My theory was that the Left’s power was ultimately derived from being a victim – that’s why the language of the Left is the language of victimhood, and the conversations of the Left are about creating division based on that victimhood.
Hence, the Resistance™.
The Mrs. thought that it was interesting that the Left also chooses to characterize its enemies in terms of the two wars – the Left is fighting Germany in World War II. The Left is fighting the South in the Civil War. Why? The Left views these wars as moral wars, simple wars complete with cartoon villains so it can remove complexity. This allows the Left to feel good about itself while teaching and preaching hate. It’s clear the Left is moving further left, while the Right retains roughly the same values as it did 40 years ago, which is intolerable to the Left. In the view of the Left, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama aren’t on the Left – no. Clinton and Obama are considered center-right, if not farther right.
Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
The general officer corps of the armed services.
The courts.
Silicon Valley tech companies.
Many (but not all) Fortune® 500™ companies.
It should be clear from the above list that the Left is marching through American institutions quickly. When Donald Trump was elected president, immediately, however, the Left returned to its normal nomenclature, it advertised itself as “The Resistance®” even though it had quietly amassed major power throughout nearly every phase of American life.
The real crime is noticing.
You and I know that the Left isn’t the Resistance, it’s in control. Why doesn’t the Right protest in hats made to look like genitals? Because we have jobs and families. But if you stand against the goal of state control, against the goal of only the “correct” thoughts being allowed, against being put at the mercy of the confederacy of victims?
You are the real resistance. And they’re afraid of you.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go home and have a heart attack.†– Pulp Fiction
I wanted to get a doctor appointment to treat my invisibility, but he said he couldn’t see me right now.
A computer can predict who will die using medical data better than a doctor. As of today, like science has no answer as to how California copes with the landfill requirements of Kardashian body hair, science has no understanding of how the computer is doing it.
A gentleman by the name of Dr. Brian Formwalt led a study where approximately 1,770,000 electrocardiogram records were fed into a computer. An electrocardiogram is also known as an ECG, for obvious reasons. For less obvious reasons, it’s also known as an EKG. EKG stands for elektrokardiographie, which is exactly the same thing as an electrocardiogram, but in German. If your doctor calls it an EKG, he just might be thinking about expanding his living room.
Always be careful when Germans research expanding anything.
Electrocardiograms are the little machine light that makes the beep sound every time your heart beats. The beat is measured by injecting elves into your body that send radio signals to the machine every time that your heart muscle squeezes them. Okay, the technical side might be a bit off, but it doesn’t really matter if you or I know exactly how the machine gets the data. It’s just the device that goes beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep to let you know that John Wick’s® dog died.
Cardiac surgeons are the guys you want to see for a change of heart.
Okay, so now you know everything that you might need to know about technology invented in 1895. But it now produces an electronic file rather than the old method, where the heart rhythm was tattooed on the backs of ill-tempered Chihuahuas.  The 1,770,000 records were then fed into a computer that had been previously taught to read ECGs. The simple question was asked – which of these patients will be dead in a year? I mean it used to make me feel better when my doctor told me, “that’s normal for your age,†but then I realized that at some point being dead will be normal for my age.
Since all of the records were over a year old, it was known which of the patients were alive and which were dead. Essentially, the doctors were (with very little data) asking the computer to predict the future. It did. And it did it better than human doctors. Some of the ECGs looked absolutely fine to human doctors – they detected no abnormality, yet the computer was able to see something that accurately allowed it to predict the death of the patient.
Then the next doctor told me it looked like I was pregnant. I said, “But I’m a guy.â€Â He replied, “But it looks like you’re pregnant.â€
It doesn’t surprise me. Computers are powerful tools that are great at taking lots of data and being able to compare it quickly. The reason that they can do this is they:
Have 100% focus, and if they get a sore throat you can give them Robo-tussin®.
Don’t need to make payments on second wife’s Mercedes® and third wife’s Lexus™.
Can retain every previous ECG reading ever seen and instantly recall the pattern if needed, much like I can retain the plot of every one of the episodes of Gilligan’s Island.
Don’t get distracted by how healthy a patient looks or how much kale he eats.
These are great advantages. In the future, machines will be able to do things where we may never understand how they made a correlation, or, as in this case, even what the correlation is. Arthur C. Clarke Third Law states that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magicâ€, and he’s right. Health care generates amazing amounts of data, and also outcomes. It’s only a matter of time until some big corporation gets evil . . .
Oh, yeah, Google®. It bought Fitbit®. Now it knows what you’re searching for, and it also has a treasure-trove of heartbeat and fitness data.
Google® is female. It won’t let me finish a sentence without giving suggestions.
I think the case is clear for someone to go through this data. With only a few records and outcomes fed into it, a computer is better at predicting medical outcomes than a very good doctor. If all of the data could be available? I think we’d have a legitimate revolution in health care.
Frankly, if we don’t descend into civil chaos, I think that this health care revolution is certain.
But Google®? Google™ has proven itself untrustworthy.
I’d suggest that we give control of the initiative to a leader that’s more trustworthy than Google®, like Bernie Madoff, but he seems to be otherwise, um, detained. And I’m sure that Jeffery Epstein has better morals, but, um, he seems to have accepted a unique opportunity with the Clinton Foundation.
“Now it was serious: a double-dog-dare. What else was there but a triple dare you? And then, the coup de grace of all dares, the sinister triple-dog-dare.” – A Christmas Story
Which is more daring, a pebble or a stick? The pebble: it’s a little boulder.
Almost 2,500 years ago, Thucydides said, “luck favors the daring.” Thucydides is dead, so, really, what did he know anyway? But part of being young is being daring – it’s on the label. There are so many things that you know, especially things that aren’t so. Life hasn’t yet given you curve balls and unexpected experiences
The lessons that you can learn from unexpected experiences can be helpful ones. The first lesson I was ever taught in high school chemistry lab was: “cold glass looks exactly like hot glass.” The second lesson was “never trust a naked man selling slightly used sulfuric acid, you can never tell where the acid has been.”
I would pay money to watch Greta in Marine boot camp – I’m sure the D.I. would nicely tell her, “As soon as you’re done getting your beauty sleep, princess, GET OFF OF MY OBSTACLE COURSE!”
After The Boy yelled “How dare you!” at the wasps, they left, because that technique always works. The Mrs. and I calmed him down, and treated the bites. The experience, however, was enough that The Boy was pretty scared of wasps – and there were a lot of them in Fairbanks that year.
So, one day after we had moved to Texas, we were in the backyard and just like in a cartoon, a beautiful butterfly had flown right up to The Boy.
“What is it?” There were butterflies in Alaska, but none that was as amazing as this one.
“It’s a butterfly,” I responded. His eyes lit up as he smiled at the colorful, delicate wings. “They bite,” I added. I had, of course, forgotten about The Boy being surrounded by wasps like ice weasels on a cheese wheel. The Boy had not.
The Boy ran into the house, screaming. The Mrs., who had observed every second, was not pleased.
Yes. This really happened. I made my son run screaming from a butterfly, so you know I had “Father of the Year” pretty much in the bag after that back in 2007.
But there are many things in life where the first experience wasn’t great, but like The Boy’s fear of butterflies, you’ve learned the wrong lesson if you avoid butterflies because of wasps. Mark Twain said it well:
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well, but also she will never sit on a cold one anymore.
Twain had to work out – he was constantly on the run later on in his life after assassinating Abraham Lincoln. He also never wore shirts – he didn’t believe in concealed weapons.
Receivers in the game of football have to have a short memory – after coming across the middle, being hit by a linebacker at a combined velocity of 40 miles per hour, you’d never run another route again if you kept that in mind. They even have a phrase that describes receivers who are jittery – they say they are “hearing footsteps” – they’re more concerned about being hit than playing the game.
And me – I had to have a short memory as well. I’ve heard that Samuel Johnson said that a second marriage “is the triumph of hope over experience,” and that’s right. It is. And if I had spent too much time overthinking it? I’d never have married The Mrs.
Hmm. Dr. Lechter Says. New feature?
I think the key is optimism and a sense of confidence that the future will be okay. I think that’s why older folks sometimes stop taking risks – they’ve had such a large number of experiences that they can see sixteen ways something that can go wrong. A teenager learning to drive, however, sees no way to lose. It’s only after experience that caution comes into play.
When was the last time you gave up an opportunity because you felt that it was too risky? When was the last time you decided not to take a vacation because the last one was bad? The minute you stop living in your life, taking risks, and knowing that the future will take care of itself, you’re dead even if you’re still breathing.
I think that most of the mistakes people make is in not being bold enough. There is an advantage to trying, especially trying things you don’t know how to do. Mark Twain said it well:
There are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world. No, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before. He doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him. He does the thing he ought not to do and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.
So, in your life, you have one shot. Do you want to regret not doing something in twenty years? Come on – join me. Convince all the grade school kids that butterflies bite. Bonus points if you convince them that butterflies produce deadly poisons*.
This may be the most Australian picture ever, but I’ll defer to Adam (LINK) and Tom (LINK).
*Not applicable in Australia, where literally everything wants to kill you, and even ladybugs can leap seven feet and have venom-tipped spikes for legs.
“The colonel behind me… that’s Colonel William Aylett. Now, his great-grandfather was the Virginian, Patrick Henry.” – Gettysburg
While salting his food, Patrick Henry said, “If this be season, make the most of it.”
The biggest genius of the Constitution was an afterthought, the result of a protest. Patrick Henry refused to go to the Constitutional Convention held in 1787, convinced that it was merely an excuse to create a strong central government out of the relatively loose Articles of Confederation. And even though it’s my policy to never trust anyone whose name consists of two first names, I’ll admit that Patrick Henry was right.
When the new Constitution was finally released, Henry (among others) complained, mainly that it didn’t contain a bill of rights. The promise was that if the Constitution was passed, the first act would be to create a bill of rights. Unlike a political promise in 2019, the framers actually did what they said, probably because in 1792 a state could have fairly easily left the United States, since at the time that was widely assumed to be a right held by states. The states voted into the agreement, the states could vote themselves out.
The Bill of Rights was passed by the House and Senate, and sent to the states for ratification – 10 of the 12 proposed rights were ratified. The 11th, the Right for Ben Franklin to be Naked Whenever He Wants was narrowly defeated by people who had seen Franklin naked. The 12th, establishing a National Taco Tuesday and Mandatory Metallica® failed initially but was finally ratified in 1994, much to the relief of radio stations everywhere.
When does this bill show up? Is it monthly?
One objection to the Bill of Rights was that it was felt that the states could do a good enough job protecting the rights of their citizens – the Federal government didn’t have all that much power, right? Another objection? It was felt that listing the rights would allow people to think that those were the only rights. That second objection is somewhat prophetic, especially since (by my count) nearly every right in the Bill of Rights has been violated at some point.
Me? I’m pretty glad Patrick Henry got the job done – the Bill of Rights has been instrumental in keeping us as free as we are today. My Aunt told me I was related to him somehow, and that’s not hard to believe – he had a total of 17 children, so there have to be a zillion descendants. Being his great-great-great-grandkid isn’t all that rare, though I imagine getting a good night’s sleep at the Henry household was rare – especially for Mrs. Henry. If I were to brag about being related to Patrick Henry, it would be like an iguana bragging that he was descended from a velociraptor. While it may be true, it won’t help the iguana get a part in the next Jurassic Park® movie, especially after what his cousin, Harvey Weinstein did. Most people don’t know that Weinstein is part iguana, on his mother’s side.
I hear that freedom weighs a WashingTon.
If that’s where we ended, with a stronger central government and a strong bill of rights, we’d be fine. We’d have a Bill of Rights that protects Americans from abuse by their government in many different ways. But in the decision of Marbury v. Madison, the newly installed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, had a tequila-inspired vision that the Supreme Court had the power to invalidate laws that it felt were contradictory to the Constitution.
This is nowhere in the Constitution itself. Marshall made the logical leap that since the Constitution wasn’t a vague set of political principles but rather the supreme law of the land, it had to be followed as if it was a law. So far, so good. If Congress made a law that couldn’t be interpreted to follow the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, the law had to be made invalid by the Supreme Court.
A Supreme Court is just regular court, but with sour cream and tomatoes.
Thomas Jefferson had a different view: he felt that each branch of government had the power to declare acts by the other branches unconstitutional. Presidents have, in multiple cases, not enforced laws they felt were unconstitutional.
Jefferson further felt that states could declare laws that were especially in violation of the Constitution void. The recent legalization of marijuana in multiple states without intervention from the Federal government has proven the principle that Jefferson wrote about early in the life of the country. If it took a Constitutional amendment to make booze illegal, why shouldn’t it take one to make marijuana illegal at the Federal level. How can the Federal government legally make enforceable laws dealing with the amount of decongestant I can buy?
Because power keeps flowing to the Federal government.
The Constitution was written in 1787, and the Bill of Rights was fully ratified in 1791. The words in the Constitution clearly have changed only through the 27 amendments to the Constitution.
Hey! I can write bathroom graffiti that kids can’t understand!
One concept in English Common Law is that of precedent. From Wikipedia®: Common Law Legal systems place great value on deciding cases according to consistent principled rules, so that similar facts will yield similar and predictable outcomes, and observance of precedent is the mechanism by which that goal is attained. The precedent of the Supreme Court is supposed to remain unchanged.
Most of the time, it is.
Yet there have been 141 cases where the Supreme Court changed its opinion and rejected previous Supreme Court decisions. 102 of those cases came during or after 1960: that was about the time that the Supreme Court became activist in finding new “rights” – the right of people to use contraception or be free from hearing a prayer at the start of school. 28 of the 141 reversals of precedent were in just a single ten year period between 1960 and 1969. Earl Warren was Chief Justice during that time.
When the right involves the federal government being prevented from interfering with liberty, I’m for it. But the Warren Court specifically focused on creating new rights and new judicial power and accomplishing goals that the legislatures either at the state or Federal level wouldn’t – the Warren Court was about fairness and equity rather than justice – the Supreme Court decision mandating participation ribbons and allowing soccer into the United States came from the Warren Court.
I had to play soccer with second graders the other day. I really should save up and buy a ball.
Any action provokes a reaction, and the Warren Court specifically was opposed by the newly formed doctrine of “originalism” – the idea that the Constitution means what it says in plain language, and not what you want it to say. If that’s the case, the Constitution just becomes a series of popular (on the Left) interpretations like “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” should really be read as “the state has the right to arm the police,” and “Congress shall make no law” really means “Congress can do whatever it wants to do this week – it’s having a midlife crisis.”
It can be shown that the 1960’s and early 1970’s was the time that set the stage for every problem that we’re experiencing today. As much as blaming the Boomers is popular (I’m not a Boomer), it’s really not deserved. The Boomers had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time – I can make the case that 1973 was the high-water mark for the economy of the country, and the Boomers did what anyone would do – make the best of their time, while wearing dark socks with sandals and listening to way too much Bob Dylan®.
The real culprits of our situation today are the leaders in charge in the 1960’s. The Greatest Generation really created the Greatest Problems. They fought and won a world war, but they put in place policies that are demographically tearing the United States apart today, and have put our economy at risk through a debt that grows exponentially. The Boomers didn’t take us off the gold standard. The Boomers weren’t responsible for Green Acres® being cancelled.
The Boomers did, though, give us Led Zeppelin. Even better when sung by a rubber chicken being observed by a cat.
The Constitution was awesome for a very long time, but it won’t save us – the Constitution of the Soviet Union provided for “freedom of speech” after it was, of course, reviewed by the appropriate government censor. The next Leftist president will happily appoint as many Supreme Court justices as required to interpret the Constitution to mean whatever the Left wants it to mean. The Warren Court wasn’t an aberration- it was a test case, one that set the stage for the future dream of the Left – complete power.
One thing stands in their way. You.
Virginia in this November’s election shows that the solution isn’t to vote moar harder. Virginia, the state that gave us Patrick Henry, is now permanently Left, with both houses and all top state-level jobs now held by Democrats. The Left wants more and bigger government, the exact opposite of Henry wanted. When I was growing up, and someone wanted to do something, I’d often hear, “It’s a free country” as an answer. That meant, essentially, do whatever you want. I rarely hear that phrase anymore.
However, the Right isn’t done yet. Remember what Janis said –
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain’t free, no no
And while you can vote yourself into tyranny, you can’t vote yourself out of it.
In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, “Ow, I hurt my leg. I can’t run. A lion eats me and I’m dead.” Well, I’m not dead. I’m the lion. You’re dead. – The Office
Thankfully we have the United Nations – where governments that oppose free speech can finally be heard.
On Monday, November 4, 2019, the National Health Service (NHS) of North Bristol, like my ex-wife, implemented a policy to deny service to people whose opinions they don’t like. The italicized text directly below is me quoting the NHS directly.
The abusive behaviour policy covers anyone (visitors or patients – J.W.) with mental capacity making (sic):
Racist or sexist language, gestures or behaviour.
Excessive noise.
Abuse of alcohol or drugs.
Threatening and offensive language.
Malicious allegations.
Intentional damage to trust property.
I’m pretty sure my ex-wife’s list is shorter, consisting of only one item: “Being John Wilder.â€Â Breaking those NHS rules will get you banned from the hospital. If you are a patient, they’ll at least wait until your life isn’t in immediate danger. And then they won’t serve you anymore.
You can read it all here (LINK). First, I’m assuming that whoever wrote the web page knew English, but the English spell it behaviour – we spell it behavior. They spell it colour, we spell it color. Flavour? No, flavor. I guess that must be why George Washington texted King George “LOL, getting rid of u†in 1776. Second, this seems like a pretty reasonable list, right? How could you be upset about those things? If someone were coming into my place of business, I’d kick them out for doing many of the things listed.
But this isn’t a private business – this is the provider of healthcare for 90%+ of the population of the United Kingdom. And the plain language that you and I might agree was reasonable will morph over time. A guy casting a porno movie is being investigated for a hate crime in Britain because he didn’t want to cast a transsexual with, um, man parts for the porno he was filming about sex between a man and a woman. Why is that a hate crime? Because the transsexual (who, I remind you, has man parts) identifies as female and wants to play the woman’s part in a porno, but without having woman parts.
Yeah. I need a scorecard, too.
I guess there’s no Internet in Farmington, NM.
But the silliness doesn’t stop there: a comedian that goes by the Internet name “Count Dankula†was sentenced to an £800 fine for teaching his girlfriend’s dog a trick. Was the trick eating toddlers? No. The trick was teaching the dog a salute that was fairly popular in Germany between 1932 and 1945. Why would he do that? He was irritating his girlfriend, and unless he can teach the dog to pilot a bulldog-scale Messerschmitt Bf-109, I think the United Kingdom is safe. Since the dog was featured on a YouTube® video, it is, therefore: hate crime.
Given the two examples above, if I were British, I’d have zero confidence in the way those “reasonable†points on the list above would be interpreted in the future. Deny white privilege? Obviously hate speech – we’re not going to work on your broken leg. Oppose continual reparations for (INSERT GROUP HERE)? Obviously racist – we’re sending you to racist jail!
Help me eliminate all Cancers. Then we’ll move to the Capricorns.
Great Britain has had the National Health Service since 1948, since they decided that German bombs weren’t effective enough at destroying their economy. I kid. The English seem to generally like the NHS – like Social Security in the United States it appears to be a political third rail. Touch it, and your career in eating crumpets, bangers, mash, and drinking tea in Parliament is over and it’s back to fish and chips and sending your children to the mill so you have enough money to buy cheap gin.
The service has drawbacks, but seems to work for the English, for now. I have some doubts about long-term viability, but I’m not British, so I don’t get a vote. But “Baby Oliver†is alive today (LINK) because even though the NHS refused to operate on him, he got surgery in the United States. It appears that the NHS learned their lesson with that publicity – they wouldn’t even let “Baby Alfie†out of the country (LINK).
On the bright side, dentistry is free(ish), too.
The British have sensitive teeth. They’re so sensitive, just saying that offends them.
The kicker is, of course, the control. The most ominous line in the press release is:
Any cases will be reported on the trust’s (a subdivision of the NHS – J.W.) incident management system and on patients’ individual notes.
Back when I was in grade school, teachers would say in a really grave tone that certain behavior would end up “on our Permanent Record.â€Â They really said that, and you could hear the capital letters when they spoke. It was as if that in some far-flung future where Snake Plisskin was attempting to break the President out of New York and I was applying for a job and it would still be in the Permanent Record.
The Secret Service expenses for all of the living ex-presidents are highest for Bill Clinton. That party bus ain’t gonna drive itself!
I imagined that when I finally got that great interview to be Starship Captain or whatever the interviewer would pull out a copy of my Permanent Record, shake his head disapprovingly, and say, “I’m sorry, Mr. Wilder. We simply cannot offer you a job because in fifth grade you called Brenda Vincent, a,†he would then take a long pause and adjust his glasses while staring at the paper, “poopy haired chum smuggler. We simply cannot have a man like that at Enron®.â€
In reality, my Permanent Record from grade school was probably sent to a landfill when they tore the building down. Brenda’s bait smuggling history is now lost to eternity.
But in 2019 we really do have permanent records, and in greater detail than most people realize. I get ads on my laptop in the evening that relate to conversations that I had in the afternoon when the laptop was off but my phone was nearby. There are networks of cameras that cross the nation that track license plates. If you use a credit card, you can be tracked from gas station to gas station and hotel to hotel. Your Internet search history? If your ISP doesn’t have it, the NSA does. Speaking of job interviews – you don’t really have to apply to the NSA – they already have your resume, cover letter, and know all of your references.
At least someone is interested in my life.
Increasingly in our “capitalist†system, people with unpopular opinions keep getting being censored, but it gets worse. Recently, Stefan Molyneux, who is more of a libertarian than anything, was kicked off of PayPal® – though at this writing those links were still up. If he were in the U.K., he might be denied medical services as well, and since he’s suffering from Stage 4 baldness, I hate to think about the potential future complications.
To be clear: in a socialist medical system, if you disagree with their opinions, the Leftists want to deny you medical service, and hope that you die. In a capitalist technocracy, if you disagree with their opinions, the Leftists want to silence you, deny you banking services, and hope that you die.
This will be a factor in your life. Life may get very rough before it gets better, and “rough†may last quite a few years. But I tend to think that the Right will win in the end. Why?
Because my ex-wife is on the Left. And I wasn’t sure about Hell until I met her. Now I’m sure.
“Just because you are a character doesn’t mean that you have character.” – Pulp Fiction
When the bugman began to hate . . .
There was a time after She Who Will Not Be Named was forever banished from Stately Wilder Manor, but before I met The Mrs. Yes, your host, the John Wilder was single. Can you believe I didn’t beat the ladies off with a stick? I mean, the restraining order and all . . . well . . . the less said about that the better.
There was one particular woman who had caught my attention. One evening, I introduced her to my friend who I’ll call Jim, mainly because his name is Jim. Oops – I think I’ve said too much. Now everyone will know who he is. If only Jim weren’t such a rare name!
“What did you think?” I asked Jim.
Ever the good friend, Jim said, and this is an exact quote: “What do you two have in common besides your eyes and her butt?”
They say that for a statement to really hurt, it has to be true. Jim had delivered the Atomic Wedgie of Truth®. He was, of course, correct. And you should be so lucky to have friends that will tell you the truth as bluntly and completely as Jim. The relationship between the woman’s butt and my eyes ended soon thereafter.
A friend of mine went to the hospital because of a wedgie – sadly, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 dorkiness.
Not only is character important in dating, it was pretty important to a company I worked for once upon a time: I was one of the employees lucky enough to be trained in behavior-based interviewing. The basic idea of behavior-based interviewing is that people, like the official results of Jeffery Epstein’s autopsy, don’t change very much. Therefore, the best way to get an actual prediction of the candidate’s future behavior is to understand the candidate’s past behavior. Then we were taught how to interview so they would share relevant situations so we could understand the candidate really well.
If the interview technique is done right, it doesn’t feel like an interview, it feels like casual conversation.
I was horrible in my first few interviews, as in scaring the candidate because he thought the company hired robotic androids that only appeared to be human. Thankfully, there was a feedback system from the candidates, and my boss gave me some tips based on it. He told me that it was okay to blink and breathe while conducting an interview, and that wouldn’t be perceived by the candidate as weakness. I took a risk that he was right, and the candidates stopped shaking so much during the interviews. I guess staring unblinkingly directly into their eyes nonstop during the interview is a bit creepy, so I allowed myself no fewer than three blinks per minute.
I really messed up this interview. They asked me if I was a people person. I answered, “Yes! I am a people! Or is they go great with mustard a better answer?”
But if you do anything several hundred times, you can get pretty good at it unless you’re Nicholas Cage acting in a movie. It (really) did bug the candidates that I could take notes without looking down at my notepad. It’s not a great superpower, but I decided to keep that quirk going, since it was a sign of dominance that I could use to weed out the weak. And I eventually ended up interviewing hundreds of new graduate applicants – heck, I even used the behavior-based interviewing techniques on The Mrs. the night we met to see if she had any of the character, um, difficulties that led to the untimely departure of She Who Will Not Be Named.
The Mrs. didn’t have those flaws.
So, on one blind date the girl said she was a huge country fan. Me: “Well, I like Russia, too.”
The thing that surprised me the most was that interviewees would tell me the most incredible things – like how they’d lied to people. How they’d stolen from their employer. How much they felt the world was out to get them. By the way, if you lived in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 1998 and never figured out who shaved your pig, dyed it blue, and dressed it like Dolly Parton, I think I might know the guy that did it. Don’t worry – he told me it was mostly consensual. Except for the perfume.
The interviewing system was based almost entirely around character. The company I was working for considered good character the most important factor in what constituted a good employee. More than once I heard, “You can teach a good person to do their job, but you can’t teach a bad person to be good,” from my boss. Then he’d shake his head and look at me with a sad, defeated expression on his face. Of course I didn’t blink. I had to show him the respect due the alpha of the pack.
But there were employees who actually possessed good character there, too. As an example, one employee I know was attempting to find some financial information that was relevant to his job. Somehow in working through the company computer network he stumbled upon the check writing software.
Thankfully the money is headed her way from that Nigerian prince.
Yes. My friend found the software that would have allowed him to write himself a check for $50,000,000. No human would have seen the check – it would have been printed on company check stock, signed with a dot-matrix signature, popped in the mail, and delivered directly to my friend’s house. The company had billions (really) in the bank. It wouldn’t have been immediately caught.
My friend called me over and showed it to me. It was a moment I was in awe. This company had huge piles of money in various bank accounts. I realized that just a few keystrokes could end up making my friend an overnight millionaire, at least until the audit found a few missing millions. In a situation that would tempt some people, my friend calmly picked up the phone, called accounting, and let them know they had a really big problem. And he didn’t do it from a beach in Brazil while sipping some drink that comes with an umbrella. But not flaming. That’s for tourists.
That’s good character.
Climate science has taught us that science demands seriousness.
The company actually had a list of traits they were looking for. What did they consider good character? Humility was on the list, as was honesty and a few other things people generally think are representative of virtue, as I wrote about Kardashians, Hairy Bikinis, Elvis, Wealth, and Virtue. There are a lot of things that change about people, but absent a significant psychological event (and sometimes not even then), their character doesn’t change.
That brings me to this statement: the most important part of parenting is helping to build character. I think I’ve established that character is important, so when is it important?
I think that the primary focus of parenthood is guiding children through one critical age range: middle school, from the ages of around 11 to, say, 14. Did you go to grade school with someone who was pretty cool, only to watch them become a complete dirtbag in high school? I know I did, and the time that they went downhill was in middle school.
The ages of 11 to 14 are where kids are first practicing at being adults, and are in the process of crystallizing the character that will define them for the rest of their lives. They’re understanding being really hurt and rejected for the first time, how to deal with defeat. What love is. What their values are. How to deal with victory. They’re understanding what true friendship and loyalty really is. They’re finally (thankfully) understanding what deodorant is, though generally just a few weeks too late.
As I mentioned before, I even used the techniques I learned from interviewing in the blind date that eventually netted The Mrs. When I finally took The Mrs. over to meet Jim and his family, Jim approved. “You guys seem great for each other.”
Perhaps Seneca, writing back in 60 AD or so (back when your Momma was just 50 years old), said it best:
Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance. You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it.”
When you are evaluating people to be your friend, your mate, or your employee, character is primary. Great butts are secondary, in the end.
After you’ve killed the last vampire, I guess it’s you’ve got the final Count down.
Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
As tempted as I am to move the clock because of the party-line impeachment inquiry vote, I’m going to hold at Stage 7 this month. A more formal set of structure needs to be in place to get to Stage 8.
The French Civil War lasted a very long time. Those guys just couldn’t win.
In this issue: Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Civil War II Goes Mainstream –– Updated Civil War II Index – Starvation (via Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report) – Links
Welcome to Issue Six of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War II, on the first Monday of every month. Issue One is here (LINK), Issue Two is here (LINK), Issue Three is here (LINK), Issue Four is here (LINK) and Issue Five is here (LINK).
Violence and Censorship Update
Just once I’d like to come back and report that things were looking good for censorship, that, hey, life is getting better. October 2019 was not that month. In October, Twitter® made the announcement that they were not going to accept advertisements from political candidates anymore. That’s good. Last election I voted based on yard signs. I think I voted for my realtor.
Do not, for an instant, think that payment sites, video sites, and social media sites are anything but Leftist sites. If you are on the Right, they want you to be silent. If you won’t shut up, what condition do you think they want you in?
I love this video – it shows the real way that censorship works – when the ideas are censored, your mind replaces the censored material with something that was likely more exciting than the original material. Censorship will backfire. I too, love to BLEEP all day.
Civil War II Goes Mainstream
I heard once upon a time that couples who don’t divorce, don’t talk about divorce. It’s as if the idea of the divorce wasn’t even allowed to enter the room. The logic, I suppose, is that once you talk about divorce, it becomes one step closer to being real. In that way, a divorce in New Mexico, a tornado in Oklahoma, and a civil war in the United States all have something in common – someone is losing a trailer home.
On more than one occasion this month Drudge® (yes, I know) has featured stories on the United States being near the outbreak of a Civil War. Most of the articles really didn’t read the study; in it, it asked, on a scale of 1=peace and 10=war, where are we in the United States. This is exactly the scale I developed in Issue One of the Weather Report. I have us pegged at a 7. So does the average respondent in the linked (LINK) survey. I don’t know any social science jokes – I took chemistry instead. And my chemistry jokes never got a reaction.
So, yeah. 7 out of 10 on the Civil War scale. It’s not just you. It’s not just me. This poll shows that everyone feels we’re headed this way, and most people feel we’re about the same distance from crossing into chaos. I hope it’s not chaotic like the Mexican Civil War where they ended up fighting Juan-on-Juan.
This month we are one year out from the 2020 presidential election. I think if the Democrats had any confidence in one of their candidates beating Trump, there would be no official impeachment inquiry in the House – this is an emergency effort. If you go back and read my previous posts, I was pretty skeptical that we’d see impeachment proceedings in 2019/2020. But here we are, so take all of my predictions with a grain of salt. There are several outcomes we can review at this point:
Senate Clears Trump, Trump Wins: Probably the most likely scenario as of this writing, and also the most amusing.
Outcome: I can foresee that one way where we tiptoe through this crisis without collapse is that Trump wins and somehow avoids the twin specters of public Balkanization (Left and Right) and economic downfall. More likely? Four more years of divided government, where Trump is thwarted at every turn by activist judges that hate (certain) laws being enforced with increasing deficit spending. Expect increasing street violence. Regardless: Trump will be the Last President (Trump: The Last President?).
Senate Clears Trump, Trump Loses: The second most likely scenario, although in this case I simply cannot see a Democratic candidate that won’t whither under the Twitter®fied gaze of Trump. However, Silicon Valley® is doing everything it can to pull all of the oxygen it can away from Trump – it has deleted account after account of followers on the Right for comments that followers on the Left routinely get away with.
Outcome: This emboldens the Left. They think they have already won. I would anticipate an attempt to immediately erase everything Trump did, up to and including stacking the Supreme Court. Attempting to push too far, too fast tips the economy. Things get spicy, quickly.
Elizabeth Warren would lose the election to a drawer full of socks. I think she can taste defeat.
Senate Convicts Trump, Democrat Win in 2020: The third most likely scenario. Which democrat? Elizabeth Warren? Creepy Joe?
Outcome: This also emboldens the Left, perhaps even more than Trump being acquitted. In this they would have their dream of the last three years come true. The Democratic party is already split, between the Legacy Left (think Biden, Pelosi) and the True Left (think AOC and the Teen Girl Squad). This puts the True Left into control. The True Left likes what’s going on in Venezuela and Cuba. Gotta break a few eggs to get to the Worker’s Paradise, right comrade?
Senate Convicts Trump, Republican Win in 2020: The least likely scenario of the four, and also the weirdest of the four.
Outcome: The Republicans would be in disarray after a conviction. In fact, I think in more ways than one, Trump has ripped apart the Republican party from within and exposed people like Mittens Romney as the “me too, but let’s wait a year” wing of the Democratic party. I’d be surprised if Mittens isn’t writing articles titled, “The Conservative Case for Redistribution of the Means of Production to the Proletariat,” and, “Transgender Surgery for Minors – A True Conservative Value.” The Left would be even more outraged that yet another election was stolen, and would push back even harder.
Are there other scenarios? Sure – we are in a time where people think we’re 70% of the way to Civil War. That could lead to things normally reserved for Third World countries where the President-for-life wears a fancy uniform with lots of medals. Coups. Military juntas. Trump calling out tanks in the streets. A ninth season of Game of Thrones.
Updated Civil War II Index
I’ve been teasing graphs for two months – here they are, with full bikini treatment.
Violence:
Up is bad. Violence is up overall during the year. I would have expected that it would have peaked in the summer, but, no. It’s staying high. I expect real riots in June and July of 2020. Potentially there will be riots at both national conventions – the Republicans in North Carolina, the Democrats in Wisconsin. I expect that the Republican National Convention in 2028 will be held in a Ramada Inn® in northwestern Montana. The Democrats? Probably a reinforced bunker in an undisclosed location.
Political Instability:
Up is bad. Surprisingly, down a little from September, but still quite high. Actual action on impeachment will increase this, especially if resolve fails in the Senate.
Economic:
Down is bad. Weird things are going on in the economy. Interest rates in many countries are negative(!), yet mortgage rates went up last month. High interest rates in mortgages will lead to housing price declines. And the last time that happened . . . .
Illegal Aliens:
Down is good, since (in theory) ICE is catching fewer aliens because there are fewer people trying to get in. Trebuchets would get that number to zero in an afternoon.
Starvation (via Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report)
“As in all war, food would be weaponized in a Civil War II. We don’t have to go back to antiquity for examples, more recent events provide a long list . . . .”
Remus talks about this in issue 600 (LINK) and issue 601 (LINK) of Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report. These would be good to read and share with friends.
History and cold calculation suggest food would be a weapon in a Civil War II, one of many, but of prime importance long term. Civil wars have long gestations, go kinetic suddenly and get complicated in a hurry. We have no firm knowledge what would set it off, who would be actively involved or how it would end. But the outlines are repeated well enough to guide our preparations.
The ruling class already treats middle America as this century’s Untermensch. Nothing is off the table in a civil war. Seizing the nation’s food would be an obvious move. Expect them to deploy troops to secure big ag and the necessary transportation facilities, destroy anyone who got in their way and terrorize potential troublemakers. But there’s a limit to even the deep state’s resources. Prudent survivalists in the far hills wouldn’t warrant their attention, they’d be more likely to trade shots with desperados than find themselves in a firefight with regular forces.
Food is the indispensable survival prep. At minimum this means a secure long-term stash of high calorie food sufficient to outlast the initial violence and privation without relying on resupply. Call it a year, maybe two.
The United States is one of the most spoiled blessed countries on Earth. Calories here are cheap and abundant, and very few people in the United States have ever felt real hunger at all. Starvation is such a non-problem that there is no statistics for people in the United States who have died of starvation. The biggest complaints is that people live in “food deserts” where the only things they can get are processed foods, which make them fat. More like “food desserts” than food deserts.
Are there hungry people in the United States? Certainly. Are there many starving people? Certainly not. Obesity in children is a far bigger problem. Oops. Was that insensitive? Larger problem?
Beefcake!
Hunger is a potent weapon. Food is, by any historical calculation, amazingly cheap now. Stocking up 3,000 calories per day for a person for a year could be done for $500 – if you really like rice. Flour is cheaper – $250 or so. For a year. It’s not a lot of variety, but it’s way better than starving. Here’s a great website that breaks down food on the basis of how many calories you can buy for a dollar (LINK). How much would you like to have if the trucks stopped coming to the local store?
Check out The Bison Prepper (LINK) for ideas on frugal prepping when dollars matter. Time might be short.
Links
As always, please feel free to send me links or leave them in the comments!
“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 . . . .
