Read: Part I, Part II, and Part III.
Yeah, yeah… I’ve held you here long enough. Time to leave, get on with the graduation pictures, pack up the car and bolt. But don’t be in such a hurry. While I’m rambling here, take some photos of the buildings, the trees. Feels like you can’t get away fast enough right now, but trust me – you’re going to miss this place in a couple months.
18. There’s no virtue in sacrifice.
That’s just something we tell people to make them feel better about not being able to have the things they think they want, another of the endless rationalizing tautologies we use to turn our lack of something into a benefit. There’s no morality in the concept of consumption. The only rule is this: If you can afford it, or handle it, and you want to have it, go ahead and buy it, eat it… fuck it. Just be aware, the law of diminishing returns kicks in awful quickly. Quantity’s never going to be quality, and on the buying end of the spectrum, the more you get addicted to the kick of smaller repeat acquisitions, the less cash you’re going to have to buy the big ticket items actually worth owning. If you always wanted a second home at the beach, putting plasma screen televisions in your bathrooms isn’t going to scratch that itch. Twenty day trips to the Jersey Shore don’t equal two weeks in Bali. All those substitute impulse purchases do is siphon away the money you might have been able to stockpile to get what you really want. So yes, though there may not be any virtue in sacrifice, that doesn’t mean there isn’t wisdom in it.
19. Early in your career, a lot of you will be prisoners of a false meritocracy. No use in getting mad about it. All you can do is work through it.
The kids with degrees from the highest ranked universities are always going to get the best jobs coming right out of school. This is going to anger a lot of you who, due to factors beyond your control, like a lack of money for the astronomical cost of private college tuition, won’t be able to compete right out of the chute. Get over it. None of that’s going to change, and as much as you feel uniquely slighted, it’s nothing personal. Business doesn’t have the time to vet every warm body sending in a resume. Like any rational consumer, it defaults to brand reputation, and Brown beats Ball State every day of the week. That and a fancy name will always provide insurance for the people doing the hiring. The Human Resources monkey playing gatekeeper at Big Company, Inc. has a singular goal – keeping her $85k desk-warming gig to retirement. When a candidate from a highly ranked school turns out to be an idiot, she’s got a built-in excuse – “But he went to Amherst!” If you didn’t, the best you can do is claw your way up the ladder and, to borrow from Bill Murray’s speech in Rushmore, “take dead aim” on the kids sliding by on credentials. We’re in a merciless new economy. Value’s paramount, and the days of pedigree trumping production, and protecting poor earners, are fading. However gag-inducing the exercise might be, open your mouth, self promote. Be a noticeable asset, ready to grab the slot above you as the paper tigers get axed. And they will.
20. Your ego’s a liability.
I think it was Brian Wilson who most famously suggested you should “hang on to your ego.” Seems about right, considering Wilson was certifiably insane for most of his adult life.* You know what caused a lot of the mess that’s leaving so many of you jobless right now? Ego. On one hand, ugly little miscreants on Wall Street jockeying to see which douchebag could make enough money to stick a Picasso on the wall of his mud room. On the other, millions of John Q. Publics staring out the windows of their aluminum-sided mini-estates, obsessing over how they can top the set of matching Escalades the couple next door gave each other for Christmas. Ego fucked our economy and ego will fuck you. And before you say, “Nonsense, ego drives us to be great,” consider the word’s meaning. Ambition, not ego, drives us to be great. Ambition’s sharp – it gets you a stack of hundred dollar chips at the blackjack table. Ego gets drunk, hits on 16 and pisses it all away. Ego’s malignant pride, ambition’s mildy retarded cousin, and all pride’s known for is coming before a fall. When you get up every morning, look in the mirror and say this to yourself: “There will always be millions of people richer, smarter, more handsome and swinging much bigger dicks than me.” Worst case scenario, you’ll wind up more self-actualized than 95% of society. Best case scenario, you’ll be saying it one morning and realize it isn’t true anymore. Well, at least not all of it. You’ll still be hung like a toddler.
21. Beware of people selling afterlives.
No discussion of ego would be complete without touching on our greatest egomania – the perception we’re all somehow “special,” sacred, on a mission predestined by God… A God who’s all knowing and omni-present, so involved and invested in us he’s obsessed with who we fuck, whether we eat pork or if we’re daydreaming about screwing the neighbor’s wife. And yet he’s never been seen or engaged by anyone – never stopped in at the corner deli for coffee or appeared in the bathroom to scold us for masturbating. And he can only be understood or engaged via “faith,” a device through which rejection of the overwhelming lack of evidence of something somehow provides a stronger “intangible” proof of the thing. I don’t know if God does or doesn’t exist, but I do know a gimmick when I see it, and the “faith” sold by religion is a pure, Grade A gimmickry. If I told you a band of magical trolls live in your basement, but that you’ll never be able to see or engage them – never observe any evidence of their existence but an ancient book of contradictory, fantastic fables professing to describe the history of their rich civilization under your stairs – would you believe me? Build a shrine or home for them next to the washing machine, something along the lines of the Keebler Elves’ tree house or the Hobbits’ Shire?** You’d thrown me out of your house is what you’d do.
But that’s basically “faith” – collective, tribally-reinforced suspension of disbelief… And the oddest thing is, it’s utterly unnecessary. Devout or non-believer, the golden rule’s still the same: Don’t be an asshole. If you need the balsa wood artifice of organized religion to remind you to treat people as you’d want to be treated, you don’t need prayer. You need a fucking psychiatrist. Make nice with the pious as much as you need to for business purposes, but never get too close. As pleasant as they might be, as comforting as the pitch sounds, anyone fixated on the “afterlife” is nuts. There’s more than enough astonishing, amazing shit around us right here to keep a sensible, inquisitive mind busy.
. . .
And faith’s about as good a segue as I’m going to find to wind this thing down. Because if I can leave you with one thought tying this all together, it’s to never buy into in any movement or creed whole hog… No awareness campaign, revolution, organization or corporation. Take the best pieces of every ideology you see and cobble together your own. Trust your instincts, your logic, what you discern from experience. Never trust another’s formula.
Why? Because most of the systems you’re going to see out there in the work world are fiction, fantasy… doublespeak. Endless collections of white lies devoted to nothing more than keeping their own gears rolling. Some small and some enormous, some harmless, others egregious, all of them honed to optimal marketability and effectiveness by hundreds of generations before us recognizing the central dueling truths of humanity:
1. Vonnegut was right: “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t
let anybody tell you different.”
2. If people started admitting that, no one would cut the grass, the bridges
would be left to collapse, and all the roads to crack. Nobody’d get fresh
eggs.
So we allow ourselves to believe, at least superficially, overtly, that everything everybody does is somehow intrinsically important. That the mountains of paperwork we produce every day, the emails we exchange and conference calls we daydream through are more than an endless series of one act plays the hierarchies and bureaucracies require us to put on in exchange for currency. Something to keep us busy, because, well, there’s a lot of us, and we need to do something to do with our time… need a framework in which we can pretend to compete for resources politely.
And this is where I’m supposed to tell you to follow your passions, to find significant work. But knowing what I know I can’t. Because here’s the thing… Only a few of you – five, maybe ten percent – are going to get jobs doing something you love. The rest work solely for money. But that doesn’t mean you’re screwed, that you’ll live an utterly pointless life. It’s all in how you approach the reality of your situation.
You’re going to run into endless varieties of people in the work world, but generally, broadly speaking, they break down into two simple groups – the people who live in the system they’re handed, and the people who use it.
The corporation you’ll work in will be an elegant, amazing machine, at least on the surface. A crowd of otherwise unrelated minds working in concert on dozens of fronts, hundreds of discrete projects, all directed toward a single goal. The sheer organization of the thing will seem mind-boggling, let alone that it manages to churn profit, pay all of its moving parts and repeat that process every single day simply to remain alive.
It’ll also be a massive joke, a hideous wreck of neuroses and incompetence no rational human would ever be involved with if he didn’t need the cash. A mosh pit of political infighting, backbiting and jockeying by the terminally ambitious… An endless battle for the CEO slot – for someone to feel like he’s “made it” until he screws up and the hordes pining for his job kiss him off as the Senate did Caesar.
And that’s why I’m telling you here, Don’t be the punch-line in that joke. Never make the work your life. See it for what it is – a game, a play… a stage where you’re just an actor. A small piece of your much broader existence, where you collect the money you use in your actual life.
When you view the job with that clarity, two things happen. First, you’re confident. A man who sees the forest doesn’t get hung up on making decisions about one tree or another, and being able to make decisions quickly is fifty percent of getting ahead.*** Second, and far more importantly, when you treat the office like a game, you keep perspective on what really matters. You save your actual personality and real energy – the You that counts (as opposed to the “work clone” that’ll inevitably start showing up at your desk after a few years) – for your family and your friends. In the end they’re all you have. Fuck up that part of your life and you’re Dead. A thousand successes in your career will never make up the difference.
People will tell you having a split personality is bad. Bullshit. In a corporate world, it’s the only healthy existence. A man who lives for the office lives and dies a fiction. And he’ll never get as far as he deserves to because no one in charge will respect him. “Bob’s a hard worker, but he doesn’t ‘get it,’” they’ll half snicker, never expounding as to what. There’s power in seeing beyond, in caring less than most. You’ll find yourself in on the joke, rather than one of the punch-lines.
___________________________
* At one point, the man kept his piano in a giant sandbox in his living room.
** I’m fully aware of the disregard for distinctive species on exhibit here. And the fact that the Keeblers aren’t real elves.
*** Ever listen to that harried co-worker complaining about how hard she’s working and how little some other worker is doing? The complainer’s always ineffective, paranoid and stuck on some detail. She’s actually mad at herself. She wishes she could be as calm as the person she’s complaining about, but that’s never going to happen. Why? Because she takes the job way too seriously. Paperwork isn’t cardiac surgery. If you think you’ve got to get everything done immediately and perfectly, you’re never going to get ahead. Half of climbing the ladder is learning to do the projects that matter and ignoring the assignments management will never ask you about. Try to do it all and you’ll burn out, and the burnt get fired twice as often as the lazy.
good stuff. having done both white collar office paperwork and minor surgery, as a tip, even doing surgery it doesn’t help to take it too seriously. there is a HUGE difference between caring about the quality of your work and stressing. in fact stressing and taking things too seriously pretty much makes things worse, including surgery.
PL: You can definitely care too much. And it’ll make you a paralyzed wretch.
Thanks for the timely advice.
PL: Get yer ya yas out now. What do you have? One, two weeks left?
I’m so glad there are people like you who can articulate that point so well, that you should work to live and not live to work.
A good illustration for the school-leavers would be to take a look at the Faculty, treating academia as the be-all and end-all of existence because they can’t function in the “real” world.
PL: I’ve had some interesting conversations with people in that universe. The criticism doesn’t hold for all of them, but there’s definitely a bubble effect impacting the way they see reality, and their perception of things can be pretty bizarre.
Thoughts on this Satch vs Coldplay thing? I hear despite the evidence, the nature of the suit makes it practically unwinnable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEGGFJLpbu4
PL: Out of court settlement. Too much to risk for Coldplay. And it won’t be difficult to make Satriani an offer he can’t refuse. The guy’s not rolling in money.
PL,
This speech needs to be available for easy printing/distribution, all in one piece. You’ll get to watch it bounce around causing mahem, and you’ve already collected the paycheck it brought you. You know that it’ll show up in odd places.
You diddn’t mention the alienating effect of technology except in the most oblique way. Perhaps that’s for the best since your speech is pretty long and it isn’t the main focus, but as an engineering student I’ve seen Technology sequester young, virile, even attractive kids and twist them into awkward trolls who can’t even handle themselves in the most basic of social situations. Technology attracts, mints, and breeds douchbaggery. There’s got to be something between this what you talk about in 20… let’s hope this re-organizing of the economy is a self-cleaning and natural consequence of our soaring douchebag index, which, judging by your speech, you figure is on the decline.
Did you think about tossing in a subtle (or otherwise) ‘legalize marijuana’ message, like Andrew Lahde, only to decide that it would detract from the overall effect? Cause if you did, I think you were right. That being said, Legalize It!
Thanks for helping me clear up my thoughts. I just graduated. I saw Star Trek last weekend, and the plan now is to go into Space Development. I figure it’ll be fun. Also, if we nuke ourselves before we get established on other planets we’ll be way more fucked than if there’s some people on Mars who can at least learn from it. I guess I’ll help push us there. Then again, those guys on Mars will probably be the same 1-dimensional engineering nerds that made NASA famous, so who knows how much they’ll actually learn.
And let’s not even talk about Thinking Machines… quite frankly I’m terrified of the new Terminator movie coming out this summer. A group of brilliant, sequentially-thinking nerds wearing side blinders will eventually create SKYNET, just like those idiot savant Bankers ruined our economy.
I’d like to point out: this is the first piece in which you outline some horrific problem and then actually provide a coherent solution. I’m not sure what that means yet, but thanks again for putting this thing together.
–Johnny 5
PL: Well there is the “Printer Friendly” feature on each piece we provided to allow people to print this stuff out and pass it around when we learned my site was banned from some firms and corporations. The text of those versions is much easier to read than the black and grey writing on the site. Just click on “Printer Friendly Version” under the title.
I’m not sure how much this speech will show up in odd places. I think when you deconstruct things to a certain extent, people don’t want to hear it. Writers do that because, well, that’s writing. And people read the text and understand the critiques, but as much as writing and humor and social commentary can cut through a lot of bullshit, people also realize that most of what’s being exposed in those commentaries is never going to change. It can leave a number of readers kind of depressed. On one hand, there’s the epiphany – “Yes! Somebody said it.” On the other, there’s the recognition, “But these white lies that make up so much of what we do, what we profess to believe and what we claim is going on are never going to stop. Because if they did – if people admitted their aims openly, and talked bluntly about the human condition, we’d think about a lot of things that would cause us to stop doing what we’re doing, and a whole lot of the mechanisms around us would grind to a halt.” Hence, at the end, I offered the only solution I could – the one most decent people follow: Play the system like a game. And always, quietly, internally, keep your distance.
The original thematic line was going to be a play on an old Slick Rick song – “Treat her like a prostitute.” On deeper consideration, however, “Treat [work] like a prostitute” was too cute in one regard, too clunky in another, and a little coarse for the message.
“But that’s basically “faith” – collective, tribally-reinforced suspension of disbelief… And the oddest thing is, it’s utterly unnecessary. Devout or non-believer, the golden rule’s still the same: Don’t be an asshole. If you need the balsa wood artifice of organized religion to remind you to treat people as you’d want to be treated, you don’t need prayer. You need a fucking psychiatrist. Make nice with the pious as much as you need to for business purposes, but never get too close. As pleasant as they might be, as comforting as the pitch sounds, anyone fixated on the “afterlife” is nuts. There’s more than enough astonishing, amazing shit around us right here to keep a sensible, inquisitive mind busy.”
Fantastic.
On another note have you read the Cato study on Portugal’s decriminalization of all drugs.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080
Looks like maybe people are starting to get it.
PL: …And somewhere Milton Friedman is saying, “So I was a little off on the market self-policing thing… I’m right on the drug stuff!”
No, I haven’t. But I’ll take a look. I love that Cato has PJ O’Rourke listed as its “H.L. Mencken Scholar.” The title follows his name so perfectly.
Old news:
http://www.ilike.com/artist/Coldplay+%2526+Sum+41/track/Pieces+of+the+Scientist
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/archive/t-411627.html
There’s always dots worth connecting. In this case its a matter of listening as opposed to reading.
PL: Lynryd Skynrd’s plane crashes, Bonham chokes on his vomit and Lennon’s slaughtered on the steps of his building. Coldplay soldiers on, to become the new U2 (an awful insult to U2, which is a good band, but that’s how Coldplay’s handler’s are positioning the group).
Exhibit 38465638 against the suggestion there’s a decent, loving deity at work in the universe.
Since I read this article(1) a few months ago I’ve been fucking terrified of the future. Look at the fucking graph!(2)It looks like a rollercoaster!
Here are my options as I see them:
Go on anti-depressants/join the borg/assimilate.
Learn some survival skills and pretend to assimilate.
Provoke some kind of international war.
Not great options, are they?
The population is due to hit 9 billion by 2050 and increase after that and increase after that and after that… But why? When quality of life is inversely proportional to population, why the fuck are we trying to to cram more and more pointless people with pointless jobs and pointless lives and see now I’m talking like a crazy person. Is it so that consumption and profits continue to rise like the smelly hippies say? Is all of this really for the shareholders?
And the worst thing is… people know this. We’re mining the future and people tell me they know, but hey, chill out. It’ll be fine. Things always work out in the end.
Seymour Skinner: We both know these children have no future.
You’re god damn right Skinner, god damn right…
1: Sorry the full article isn’t available, I’ll scan the print version if anyone’s interested. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026786.000-special-report-how-our-economy-is-killing-the-earth.html
2: http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg20026786.000/mg20026786.000-1_1701.jpg
PL: Your options also include: Stop worrying, start thinking about how to get what you want and try to do it. If you’re as interested in Global Warming as this suggests, start looking into where the Stimulus’s green dollars are headed. Hell, call Boone Pickens and beg for an internship in that wind farm project he’s pimping. There’s going to be an immense fuckload of money thrown at this green economy thing in the next few years. From what I read, the Chinese are already positioned to kill us in the industry as they have the most developed green services industries and will likely become the leader in exporting them at the lowest cost, but that doesn’t mean there still won’t be a space of time where a few shrewd domestic packagers won’t fire up a few green consulting companies or technology providers and run a few IPOs into the market. See if you can’t get in on one of those. Who knows? I don’t see it becoming a huge bubble of any sort for us, but I could be wrong, and either way, some folks are going to get rich off it. Seems like a nice way to make money and do something good at the same time. Look into it.
I don’t know if I should feel happy that all my thoughts are being verified by you, or really depressed. Either way, my only goal for this weekend is to forget everything I learned in my two years of law school. Forget that I have to work in a cubicle for the entire summer. Forget that I have another entire year of school left. Forget that when school is over, it does not get much better, and it may actually get worse. Forget that I can’t even buy alcohol without being bombarded by a million different brands, all selling the same thing, claiming it is completely different. Puffy, or is it P-Diddy, or is it Diddy, or P, tells me I should drink Ciroc. He told me so on the billboard coming into Manhattan. Thank god for drugs and alcohol, because without them, there really would be no escape.
PL: You don’t have to get mired in the legal industry. You don’t have to be one of these slugs on the train, wearing the suit, reading dep transcripts, billing his every minute. You can control your life. You just have to come up with a plan. That sucks, I know, because it seems impossible. Trust me, as a person reinventing himself a bit and juggling a few different things right now, it’s hard. But it’s also rewarding.
Do not, I repeat, do not, do what I did. Do not become a professional escapist. You’ll get married to the cash flow, blow a lot of money you ought to be saving and wind up wasting a bunch of years. If the firm life doesn’t feel right immediately, it’s never going to feel right, and you have to start putting together a Plan B asap. Never, ever, think, “Well, with a little more money it’ll be better.” That’s where you get hooked.
And never, ever, ever work in litigation. It’s a useless skillset outside the practice of law. Get on the business or regulatory side or don’t even fucking practice. Litigation’s value is and will continue to drop like a stone because anyone can do it.
I could go on… The rest’s in my book. Trust me. It’s the best $18 you’ll spend on this stuff. If you don’t have the cash, shoplift it, or steal it from another law student. Every law school has a couple copies floating around inside it.
“Trust me. It’s the best $18 you’ll spend on this stuff.”
Maybe if he buys it on Amazon, but brick-and-mortar stores will charge him 23.95 plus tax. Talk about your shyster deal. That’s more than a handle of decent vodka.
But seriously, I think this series is one of your best.
PL: That’s why I recommend shoplifting it. Can you beat $0.00?
Seriously, thanks. This was a fun series. Do me a favor if you can (I know you will)… Pass this around. A lot of my shit is subjective and requires a certain sense of humor, but everybody can relate to, and ought to read, these observations. The more we talk about our real condition and stop observing the white lies, the better off our society will be. We need to level with ourselves more about what people are really like, and address it openly. I think the fear is that if we widely admitted how petty, venal, selfish and untrustworthy a lot of people are, the clarity would hurt society. I have three things to say to that:
1. The dishonesty and immaturity involved in hiding it, which leads to its exposure only after a monstrous mess like this economic meltdown has taken hold, is far worse.
2. The more you hide it, the more cynical people become. And the conspiracy theories the uninformed public concocts in their heads are far more cynical than the reality of the situations.
3. There are still more decent people out there than there are assholes. We just haven’t banded together, had the collective discussions we should.
“Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.” “Decency” fits as well as “genius,” and I think Melville would have approved.
Hey, me again, Costa Rica exodus lady.
Got the all clear from the doc, handed in my notice and getting the hell outta here in 4 weeks. (yeah).
I’d quite like to send a select group of my colleagues (the ones who ‘get it’) a couple of paragraphs from your essay as a note of resignation so to speak. (beginning ‘you’ll run into endless varieties of people in the work world…, ending 4 paragraphs later).
I hope that would be OK with you, I haven’t sent it yet however so if this violates either your copyright or your sensibilities, please let me know.
Still lovin’ your work.
Cheers,
Jess
PL: Congrats on your clear bill of health. I can’t imagine how that must feel, but I’m guessing amazing.
You’re free to use anything you like here, as is anyone. And frankly, I’d be flattered. Just do me a favor and let them know where you found it. This piece was made to be circulated, and the further it goes, the better for me, you and everyone else who feels this way.
Best wishes on an what I’m sure will be a fulfilling, indulgent future in some wonderful scenery, doing what you love.
As a graduate, thank you for the dose of reality.
PL: It’s reality, but never forget, it’s a reality you can play like a fiddle if you want to. Ideally, you’ll do what you want, but if you can’t, and you feel trapped, never forget – that’s all in you head.
If you can’t or make it better for everyone, than I say the only dignified approach to a system that annoys us on so many levels is to milk it. Puts a smile on your step as you slide in and out of the elevators.
Never thought reality could be this sad. I’m 14 years old and I’m about to graduate soon. I’m some kind of genius here but I don’t think I’m ready for the work world. Thanks for the advice though.
PL: Carve your own path. The classic version of the “work world” is avoidable. You can work for yourself.
Finally got a chance to read the fourth part. Excellent stuff, Page. Part two was good, but especially liked the whole first part (1-5) #10, #11, #17, #21 and how you tied it all together. Obviously there is greater resonance with some, and disagreement with others, but that’s entirely due to specific contexts and differing philosophies, which is entirely expected. Well said – am printing this all off and putting it aside.
PL: Thanks. My only regret on it was not including a section titled, “Take smart risks.” There’s so much fear out there right now and nobody stops, pulls back and considers things in context. Unless you’re facing a long stint in jail or have a terminal disease, your problems are not dire. You shouldn’t run off and chase a dumb dream, but taking measured risks is never a bad idea, particularly in times like this.
as per your point #3 for the May 15, 2009 03:14 PM comment I think you’re wrong. Everyone has a price, and almost everyone’s is disappointingly far too low. You might run into the occasional person whose threshold is so very high that most (mistakenly) think they cannot be bought, but these people are very rare to the tune of two or three in a lifetime. Don’t be mistaken, they still have a price.
As for the vast majority of people, most will walk right over you, given the chance, rather than take the additional minute effort to take two steps to walk around.
PL: Everyone does have a price, no doubt. But as you admit, some have exceedingly high prices, and that’s the difference between the decent and the rest.
And I’m not so sure that rule applies to personal relationships. I’d never sell out a friend, and I’ve had the opportunity to do so. Selling out a boss, a manager, an opponent? That’s just business. If the person has more or equal power than you do, there’s nothing wrong with screwing him. If he’s weaker, that’s where you’re being a dick. Also, you should only screw those who’d screw you. Nothing right in kneecapping a honest boss or co-worker, even if you don’t get along. The only ones who really deserve it are the ones you know would do it to you for a very cheap price.
How important do you think a minor will be in the type of economic climate I’ll be in 3 years from now? I was sitting through my tedious Politics in Japan class, learning jack shit, weighing thoughts of “this is a ridiculously easy credit, and i’m already halfway to a minor in East Asian Languages and Culture anyway” and “This is a complete waste of my time, I’m not learning crap, and besides, won’t ‘Fluent in Japanese’ look good enough on my resume?”
I walked out during lecture and dropped the class three minutes later. Two big things convinced me- first, one of my favorite little snippets from you that said something like “Time is the only real asset you have, because once it’s gone you can never get it back” and my friend who just inherited 51% share of his father’s company- bouncing my brain back to your writings on the importance of connections vs. education.
No matter how good of a “deal” these easy classes are, I can’t bring myself to trade in a few hours of my life every week just for a paper that says Minor in East Asian Languages and Culture.
I’m switching my major to economics when i get back from japan btw.
PL: You might want to learn Chinese, for all the reasons you already know.
I don’t know if a minor ever mattered from a work perspective. Hell, I’m not sure anything you study really matters as far as getting hired. Getting hired’s all about GPA and the name of your school. It’s all just badges. As to actually being able to succeed once you’re in the job, or after you leave it to strike out on your own, I’d agree – a minor in Japanese Politics isn’t giving you much. And moving into an Econ major is definitely a smart move. In my opinion, there isn’t much an Econ professor can teach that you wouldn’t be able to pick up on your own from merely reading about the subject. But a formal schooling in it will familiarize you with the terms and formulas people who work with money use, and a lot of being able to succeed is predicated on language, using industry terms to give off the appearance you’ve deep knowledge of a subject (In this case, a subject I don’t think anyone really understands). You’ll be much more hireable for having mastered the buzzwords.
I just re-read “Brave New World”… Man what a cheap pile of crap. 300 pages of the most appealing “dystopia” immagineable punctuated by some idiocy about a moron that couldn’t come to grips with a religion that he half invented himself. Has there been a less likable charachter in fiction that John the Savage? I sweat, I’d rather suck a hobo’s cock than read another word of Aldous Huxley’s claptrap. He’s made me hate the Doors…
Now bring on my gentetic predisposition to be satisfied with my position in life, constant unencumbered sex and recreation and socially acceptable drug use.
Remind me why I didn’t become a televangelist? Uhhgh, but maybe that’s the nitrous oxide talking.
PL: Before I start this, I was watching “Darjeeling Limited” the other nite (It’s on repeat on HBO). It’s no “Zissou,” but it’s good enough in the moment… Anyhow, there’s a scene where the people run for a train and this old Kinks tune, “Powerman,” is playing. Great guitar riff. Sloppy, kind of Faces-like, but better (the Davies Brothers murdered Stewart and Wood as writers). You need to buy this record, if you don’t already own it: “Lola Powerman and the Moneygoround.” You’ll dig it. Trust me. If this is old news, my bad. It’s really tremendous. Had a copy back in high school, I think, but being a shithead who knew everything about everything in those days, I don’t think I liked it. Perhaps it didn’t have the grit of “Destroyer” anywhere on it. Likely I didn’t get it. But shit, man, listening now, I’m struck at the elegant pragmatism of the thing. Davies is underrated. Shame people will only know him from those movies. But then, that caused me to reconnect, so it’s all good.
If you’re going to suck cock, I guess a hobo’s would have more character than most. I’d take Huxley over that, but I guess I’d have to agree – not by a lot (the decider would be how much somebody was paying to fellate the hobo). Then again, I don’t think I ever finished that book, which might make your point. I know I read the “Doors of Perception,” but that was quick and journalistic (or I’m recalling it a little too simply from the gin). BNW was a Big, Big Picture book.
Why not a televangelist? That’s simple. Try as you might, you’d never be full of shit enough for the gig. Your inability to be a true degenerate impedes your ability to be a libertine degenerate.
regarding your May 24, 2009 09:19 PM reply I suppose this is where you and I differ. I am not in the habit of “selling people out” but at the same time I sincerely believe most people, including “friends” have an incredibly low price. Basically think of a person’s price and go twice as low and you’ll be somewhere in the neighborhood. Whether that’s right or wrong that’s how I feel based on observations I have made as well as experience. The bottom line is I believe all people have a price and the vast, vast, vast majority have an incredibly low price.
PL: True. But I’ve always tried not to align myself with those people. I’d clip a business associate I didn’t trust without thinking twice and actually find the process amusing, but as to friends, or even just people I trust, or know are decent and undeserving of any bad treatment – like I said, I’d rather be destitute than sell one out.
As to that “vast majority”… the rest, those people don’t count. They’re just actors you interface with as you move through life. If one guns for you or seems untrustworthy, avoid him. If he can’t be avoided, screw him before he screws you. Because he will.
If it’s not on youtube, then it doesn’t exist. I’ve been on a Grand Funk, April Wine, Jethro Tull kick lately.
Also just listened to Soul Stripper for the first time in a decade. I’m pretty sure that’s what caused the earthquake down here…
PL: I took the wife’s car out yesterday and gunned it on a back road listening to that track. I forgot how soulful Angus was back in the old days. That thing almost sounds like Santana in parts. Such a great fucking disc. I like Brian fine, but it’s a goddamn shame Bon had to go so early.
I got a kick out of this article, PL. Nice job. I’ve just forwarded it around. Have to say though, when I read this…
“Value’s paramount, and the days of pedigree trumping production, and protecting poor earners, are fading.”
…I couldn’t decide whether to think you were being intentionally deceptive, glossing over the patently ridiculous myth of American social mobility that gets shoved down the throats of the narcissistic peasants that flock there; or whether you actually do still possess the delusional optimism of a seventeen-year-old. Either way, for that line, I hope that hobo you’re busy fellating decides he’s had better, and that he repeatedly and violently slaps you in the face with his diseased, oozing penis until you’re on the ground in the fetal position, convulsing and screaming incoherently like an off-leash autistic toddler.
This “merciless new economy” is just going to entrench the already-wealthy and already well-connected even further. Cut the crap and get back to being funny.
PL: Of course it’s going to entrench the same old power structure. Capital begets capital and when’s there ever been a better time to be sitting on cash?
BUT… The “pedigree” I’m talking about in this country – the goofy academic meritocracy that caused law firms to pay any silly nitwit who could ace the LSAT a king’s ransom for graduating Harvard – has been damaged. Think of it this way. There won’t be a whole of kids running to Harvard in the future. Too damned expensive, and they might not even be able to get the loans. Law’s going the way of accounting firms. Lower pay, lower credentials, and a ruthless emphasis on production over “exclusive brand badges.”
If we were in a “productivity cycle” before, where business demanded more and more out of workers, where in any even less forgiving one now. Pardon my prejudice, but having worked with and against the highly-credentialed and the modestly credentialed, I tend to find the modestly credentialed bring more value. They can talk. The can multitask and they tend to have better instinct and be better readers of people and competition. They can make rain where the savants get caught in mental quicksand.
Sure, the people with money will always stay at the top. But I think in the professional services industry, there’ll be a new emphasis on getting the biggest bang for the buck out of employees, and having employees wear multiple hats. That augurs positively for the more well rounded sorts who are naturally cheaper to hire.
By what moral basis can you tell someone not to be an asshole? If there is no Divine standard for right or wrong, and we’re all accidental products from a primordial soup, who are you to force your value of “not being an asshole” on me? How do you define asshole anyway? How could you logically refute someone who defined it the opposite of how you do?
PL: There’s no “divine” anything. There’s common sense and decency, which in concert dictate how we ought to act toward one another. It’s instinctual. We know how to act and we know how not to act. The “divine” angle was something invented to compel the less evolved, less educated masses of ages long past to act as they should.
If you can’t find right from wrong in your head from a simple humanist view, you’re either severely autistic, a sociopath or subconsciously practicing willful ignorance.
Of my four years in college, I can remember fuck-all about anything academic. But there was one professor who I’ll never forget.
He was an old, cynical Ivy-league law graduate and most people hated him for being a real son of a bitch, but he was the head of the program and everyone in my major was forced to take at least one class from him at some point. He was also a nit-picky asshole and would openly criticize students in class for deviating even the slightest bit from his asinine requirements.
Few people had the balls to talk back after getting chewed out. But when those few would speak up and basically tell him his requirements were bull shit, he would just laugh and say, “You’ve got to play the game.”
I played his game, got an A, and ended up taking four more classes from the guy. He had a policy where he’d automatically give you an A in any class you took with him so long as you legitimately got an A in one of his classes in the past (he graded on a curve where only two or three people would get A’s per class).
This guy knew his classes and all the little requirements were bull shit; he didn’t need any students telling him that. He just wanted us to play the game, just as we would be doing in the real world. Those who caught on quick were rewarded; those who bitched got sent back to the grindstone. A fine professor he was.
Hats off to my fellow game-players.
PL: The only caveat I must add is to be careful of Stockholm Syndrome. Use the game, amuse yourself with the game, but always be careful to remember why we call it what we do.
Because that’s all it is, and all it will ever be.