Update - Frustration

I feel like I left things hanging a bit.  I had a theme I was posting on, and then stopped.

Reasons?  It's complicated.  Some if it is that I have a full time job (on vacation right now) and I don't always want to devote my leisure to writing here...

But the bulk of it is because some days it doesn't seem to matter what I write, or think, or say. I am not one of our big decision makers.  I am not wealthy, or powerful. Who is going to care if I never complete that series?  And what sort of results would writing it have, anyway?  Someone might read it, if they weren't bored within a couple of sentences, and think about it for a minute or two.  But it probably wouldn't drive any particular changes in behavior.

Some days I go online and all I see are articles saying that this is what you need to do - Wear this. No, you have to wear that.  Do this.  No, do that.  Say things this way.  No, don't do that.

I think 'sure, I can do this.  I just need to X, or Y'.  But the advice can be contradictory, and I don't think these advisors know any better than you do.  Success depends too much on who you're working with and what they're looking for.  Plus I notice that there's still so many good, smart people who still struggle to make it.  A friend of mine did a great post on tumblr the other day.  It's long, but good and captures so much of what I'm wondering/ struggling with. 

I don't want to believe that this is the way it is.  That so much of life, so many people, will struggle and get nowhere.  Especially when you see the people who are succeeding, and realize that many of them haven't actually worked harder than the people you know.  Nor, necessarily, are they smarter.

I like to think I'm a realist. I never expected our system to be perfect.  I thought, however, that we had rules in place that gave us the ability to change our system for the better.  Voting for candidates.  Voting for specific propositions.  Feedback mechanisms to help keep us from going too far astray.

I also thought...well, that the system values dissent.  You need people to go against the grain, because that's what breaks up groupthink and makes sure you're really analyzing a situation.  Yet I've come to feel that I may, perhaps, on occasion, be penalized for being too outspoken.  For not playing along.  (I think I'm ultimately helping the organization.  And I would hope that any boss/supervisor/manager I worked for would appreciate and value that.) Funny, our mythology of success always makes it sound like this is rewarded.  The innovator who stands out from the crowd and succeeds beyond their wildest dreams.  The person who speaks truth to power, and becomes a trusted advisor. 

In reality, I'm beginning to think it's more likely you'll get marginalized just like the engineer who warned of the Challenger disaster.  (What I find even more disturbing is how much business books etc claim they want and need this...and then create systems that seem to penalize the ones that actually provide it.  You see the same sort of dilemma with work - everyone knows you get burnt out and perform less productively if you work too much, but people still feel pressured to work more and compete for least amount of sleep/most hours worked.  Feel that the boss is looking for those peopel who give it their all.  You can't have the former if you create a system rewarding people for the latter.)

 

Pay It Forward, Legislation, Updates, etc.

A couple of different strands of thought going on.

First - do you ever look at the warning labels on product and think "I guess someone must have tried doing that"?  Like "Do not eat toner" on a toner ink cartridge. 

I feel that way about laws, as well.  When people say 'there oughta be a law', it's because something went wrong...and legally there was nothing you could say or do about it.  Is making something a law necessarily the best way of handling the problem?  Maybe not.  Yet I don't think we should repeal a law unless we're willing to address the underlying concern behind it.  (i.e. environmental protections were created because people would carelessly release toxic chemicals in places - like drinking water - that were harmful to others.  If you want to eliminate the EPA, show me how you are going to address problems like that without them.) 

I am not a fan of people who obey the letter of the law while trying to maneuver around the spirit of it.  That applies to any number of things, though more recently I would say it applies to Hillary (and any other politician) who tries to conduct public business through their own private e-mails.   Why?  Because most of us have work e-mail and personal e-mail, and the only reason I can think of for conducting work via personal e-mail is if you're trying to avoid leaving a record.

In other news - I read and liked this article, though I'm skeptical of whether it will lead to real results.  It reminds me of the problem with 'pay it forward' logic.  That is - on the face of it, it makes perfect sense that if we all did something nice to others and paid it forward when someone else is nice to us than we could live in an amazingly wonderful world.  Yet even though various people have 'paid it forward', they never seem to result in this sort of transformation.  I think there are a couple of primary reasons for this.

First - it's easy to 'pay it forward' with something cheap, something that doesn't really require a lot of effort on our part.  Just to show how easy it was, I decided to pay for an extra mocha when I was at a coffee shop.  It was really kind of fun - a lady came in after I'd ordered, and I got to hear the cashier explain that her drink was paid for...see how surprised and happy it made her.  And see her decide to carry it on by paying for the next one.  And then a man came in to get his coffee, and went through the whole process again...buying a drink for the next person.  (I haven't had a chance to follow up with the barista.  He's the owner/manager of that store and I think he's on vacation?  I wanted to know how long it lasted.)  Btw, I didn't expect it to last forever.  While I knew that most recipients would choose to pay for the next person, eventually you'd run into someone who wouldn't.  And that's fine...the point is not to put an obligation on them to keep paying.

Anyways.  Pay it forward works for something simple and easy, like coffee.  It's less likely to happen when it entails a real hardship.  Like paying for someone's college.  Or house.  Or car.

The second thing is that most people are waiting for someone else to start the chain.  If they benefit, they are more than happy to pass it along...but they're waiting for someone else to benefit them first.  (If you want to feel like you really made a difference, try starting one of these yourself.  Imagine all the smiles and happy faces you make in a day, the little jolt out of the ordinary that you give them.  Think of what ripples that can have...that little bit of happiness leading to a slightly happier entrance to work, a cheerful conversation with a co-worker, etc.)

So to bring this back to the article above - I think government involvement is the sign of failure in the system.  I think inequality is a huge problem, one of the biggest threats to the American way of life today, and I would absolutely love to see it addressed the way the author suggests.  Yet I'm skeptical that the business leaders he is addressing are willing to take the steps he is calling for.

And finally - I've decided to re-read Robert Alter's pretty awesome translation of the first five books of the bible.  I think he does a pretty amazing job of explaining the context (lost in translation from Hebrew to English) and capturing what little we know about the cultures of those times.  I'm also going to look for some of his other works.