Another Labor Day to ponder what’s become of our great nation and the men and women who gave it the strength and resilience to face any challenge and overcome it. This began as a celebration of the workingman, an animal no longer familiar to Americans.
Not Labor with a capital L, as in organized labor unions. I mean labor as in skilled workers solving interesting problems. I mean craftspeople who use their hands, their backs and their heads to do important work.
Labor was a key part of the manufacturing revolution. Industrlalists needed smart, dedicated, trained laborers to solve interesting problems. Putting things together took more than pressing a few buttons, it took initiative and skill and care. Labor improvised.
That’s from Seth Godin, and very inspirational. It’s unfortunately not accurate in the slightest. The industrial revolution needed sheep-like workers, and plenty of them, to provide the cheapest possible fodder for their machines. They were happy to use starving children to pull the levers that worked the wheels of industry, as long as it made them money. Is that what Seth means by “improvised”?
Godin is a smart guy, so if I’m forced to choose between his being ignorant of labor history or his recreating history that never happened, I’m inclined toward the latter. The question is why he would do such a thing.
The answer, I suspect, is that the truth about labor in America is too painful and inconsistent with the schemes and dreams of America’s youth. You can’t sell them a bill of goods by making them feel lousy about themselves and their future, so inspire them instead by feeding them feel-good lies of false hope.
From the Harvard Business Review :
Most if not all of the digital communities where Gen Y has spent time are highly egalitarian. They’re indifferent to pre-existing hierarchies and credentials, and sometimes even hostile to them. And these communities seem to Millennials to work really well; Wikipedia gives them good information on any topic under the sun, Intrade prediction markets tell them who’s going to win elections, Twitter lets them know what’s going on in the world better and faster than any other source, their Facebook friends answer their questions for them, and so on.
All this can make a strong case to Gen Yers that hierarchy and credentialism are passé as concepts, or should be. So when they show up after graduation at their first employer, some of them start acting this way.
They assume that their contributions and opinions will be as sought after and valued as anyone else’s. They feel free to voice their thoughts on topics both related and unrelated to their job descriptions. In short, they implicitly follow the explicit philosophy of most Web 2.0 communities, which is “we’re all equals here.”
If you have any doubt that this is happening, spend five minutes on twitter, where you will quickly learn that anyone with a keyboard is the equal of anyone else. Not just in their mind, but in the minds of all. After all, you have no idea who that fellow twitting at you is from the amorphous bio, “Cyclist and lover of all things worthwhile, discovering great food and helping others to transcend their limitations.” Okay, so you ride a bike. Got it.
Everyone realizes that they can’t all be the king of the world. They just recognize the fact that the others are a bunch of fakers, while our claim is real. They all want to be the one who really is entitled to tell the boss what’s up, while the other dopes should go back to their cubicle and try not to drool on the keyboard. The egalitarian digital society matches up nicely with the image Godin manufactures of the laborers who made America great. But as Godin’s history never happened, so too will the pseudo-egalitarian society bring failure and unhappiness.
There’s a reason hierarchies exist. You can’t be the boss if there’s nobody below you. Consider the pyramid, that three sided shape you ignored in geometry class. Notice how it’s big at the bottom and small at the top? Turn it upside down and it falls over.
It’s understandable that you don’t want to be in the big group at the bottom, with all the other people who think their every idea is critically important but isn’t (unlike yours). But without that big group at the bottom, there’s no one to do the work.
At his blawg, renamed for Labor Day How ‘Bout Getting Back to Work, You Losers…™, Wild man Dan Hull keeps beating the drum:
“Nice guy/lady–just don’t get in a foxhole with him/her”. We hope that no one has ever said or thought this about you–but it’s likely that they already have. We live in a world where about 98% of the time wimpiness and lack of courage are rationalized, stylized, and sold to us as “smart” or “prudent” and even as a “right”.
Americans, too, of course. For all our bluster, many of us get weaker, more insubstantial, and more irrelevant every day. We don’t meet and talk. We rarely look anyone in the eye. Instead, we type and text, day in and day out: skittish mini-critters running on shiny little treadmills in cages set behind screens and tubes.
Squeak-squeak.
Indeed, Technology has insulated–rather than “unleashed”–many of us. Is this all there is? Dang! Busy but dazed and confused? Whoa. Life sure got small and squeaky fast.
Squeak-squeak, you losers.
I’m not entirely sure that Dan’s 98% is accurate. He may be overly optimistic, but that’s not terribly important. What matters is that we stop embracing the feel-good lie that we’re all going to be the king of the world, effortlessly and by the end of the week. There will be no vast wealth to be had by spending your life sending text messages or playing videogames.
On my first day of college, the dean told the assemblage to look to their right, look to their left. One of us would not graduate. Failure is a fact of life, and it was up to us to make sure that we worked our butts off to make it through, to not be the one going home on the bus to a future at Dairy Queen, aspiring to one day be the manager. It was harsh, but necessary.
Is this too negative a post for Labor Day, a day to celebrate the achievement of America’s working men and women? Absolutely, but then our society is a smack in the face to all those men and women who worked hard, who sacrificed, who never had the chance to concern themselves with work/life balance because there were mouths to feed or bridges to build.
No one is consigned to the junk pile of the Slackoisie. The only way you get there is to make the active decision to jump in. Every person has a choice to make, whether to put in that degree of thought and effort necessary to distinguish yourself from all the others at the bottom of the pyramid, or spend your days sitting on the couch in your parents’ basement, alone, thinking about how important you are and demanding on the internet that everyone respect you.
You can be in that 2% that Hull speaks of, the one that somebody would want in the foxhole with him. You may need to stop emitting noise to your boss, as if your 12 minutes of hard work have entitled you to seize control of the enterprise that provides you with a paycheck, and listen and learn instead.
Labor Day is a call to action, a day to consider that America was built on the hard work, the broken backs, the tireless effort, of your predecessors. No, it’s not a pretty image, and it doesn’t lend itself to the inspiration that will make you feel confident that you will park that BMW in your two car garage of your suburban home. But unless you’re shaken out of your complacency, your false comfort zone that somehow it’s all going to work out fine, both you and this country are going to crumble under the weight of crumbs left at the bottom of your Cheetos bags.
Look to your left. Look to your right. If you don’t see anyone there, then you need to stop playing with your computers and get your butt out the door to work. Nobody is going to send you big checks for reading every submission to Fail Blog. And nobody cares if you think you’re special. Happy Labor Day from those good folks who worked hard so you can enjoy your day off.
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Great post. This especially resonated:
But unless you’re shaken out of your complacency, your false comfort zone that somehow it’s all going to work out fine, both you and this country are going to crumble under the weight of crumbs left at the bottom of your Cheetos bags.
This is why we’re stuck in this stasis while the elite keep sucking more money from ordinary people via their market-invested 401Ks, and police violence is treated as a ho hum. Of course, since nearly every time a cop abuses their authority they charge their victim with a felony crime (at least in Texas – assault on a public servant, interfering with a police officer, et cetera) this also serves to remove voters from the rolls.
Love the post, but wonder why it’s necessary to deprecate the workers and managers of DQ. Without them, there’s no DQ, no Grill Burger [TM], no Blizzard [TM].
I think the world needs DQ as much as any other fast food chain and there are plenty of people whose skills are in line with those required. Instead, we push them off to university where they learn little and exit with the pretty much same skills as they had when they entered. Except now they expect to be VP for Whatever a couple of weeks after signing on.
I have been unfair to Dairy Queen. Next time, Chuckie Cheese.
I agree that there are hierarchies, and that they aren’t irrelevant and will never be. In fact I’ve thought for quite some time that the most natural form of government is monarchy. The US, often described as “the world’s oldest democracy” has evolved into something almost indistinguishable functionally from a monarchy.
I also agree that the recent trend, especially since the internet appeared, is anti-hierarchical, and probably insufficiently appreciative of the legitimacy of hierarchy and order.
OTOH, hierarchies have a tendency to become ossified. A good idea is a good idea, whether it comes up through the established order or not.
The 21st century so far is trending as profoundly decentralizing as the 20th century was centralizing.
To the extent you are suggesting that the hierarchy trumps individual merit and effort, such that credentials and one’s place in the pecking order are more important than whether one is correct, I have to disagree. If some kid sitting in his basement is right about something he is right, regardless of whether the powers that be recognize it or not, and regardless of what his credentials and position may be.
The current difficulties with criminal defense to some degree stem from the unwillingness of those higher up in the hierarchy to accept evidence and argument from those outside itself, a group that unfortunately includes CDL’s.
One question I would ask in response to your thoughtful post is: to what extent is the kid in the basement a reaction to an ossified hierarchy that has lost the ability to accept a correct idea from the outside, and even resents it?
Consider the 98% paradigm. Perhaps 2% of the time, the “new idea” is a better idea. It’s the 98% of the time that its not that presents the problem. The cure isn’t to endure nonsense 100% of the time in order to obtain the 2%, but to eliminate the 98% that isn’t meritorious yet feels entitled nonetheless.
The people that need to read this don’t read your blawg.
How right you are: the number of better ideas is statistically very small. There’s a lot of chaff to sort through to get to the wheat.
Yet, this is one of the central problems of fallible human existence. And while this is only my opinion, it should not be considered optional to tackle it. It’s an intellectual and moral imperative to find, apply and implement good ideas and correct thinking, even if it takes a lot of effort to sort through the rest.
And here is where I have a little sympathy – not much – for judges. In this regard the job of a judge and the job of an attorney are very far apart. The attorney gets to choose which causes he will undertake from among those that are presented to him. The judge must decide every single thing that is presented to him. If he takes it seriously, it is a difficult job, though in no sense is it rocket science or brain surgery.
The attorney loses all control over the outcome after he takes a case, other than what he himself does about it. The judge has no control over what is presented to him, but has near total control after that.
I think the root problem of judging as it currently exists is that judges do not put in any mental effort. It’s much easier to look at every case in political terms and let that drive the outcome, and from a mental effort point of view this is extremely easy: just side with the more powerful litigant and/or lawyer. Much better for you. Nobody will complain – at least, nobody important will.
Your law clerk(s) will come up with the rationale.
One irony is that it’s not all that difficult to do the opposite, either. The law, for all the pretense of its practitioners, is not that complicated. Puzzles like the Rule Against Perpetuities are very uncommon. The application of the correct rules of law to the vast majority of cases is straightforward; the only thing that complicates it is the political concern of the judge, which frequently calls for a different outcome than the law would dictate. In such a circumstance the judge feels himself to be in a difficult position, but the difficulty arises only from the conflict between his self-interest and doing his job properly.
Personally, I think the degree to which judges opt for self interest in such situations has reached an extreme.
I just write ’em. I can’t make anybody read ’em.
Thanks for the mention, and taking a shot at Looters in the Crappysphere–and everywhere else. Wonder how much more we can dumb down quality in 2011? Get up early. Fly the colors. Defeat slacks of all ages. It’s easy. Smile/laugh when you do it.
Being in my mid-20’s, most people I know/meet in my generation never ceased to amaze me with how much they whine and bitch about the very little work they actual do have to do. Were they just born with this sense of entitlement? No, it was most likely a developed state of mind which was continually nurtured by their parents, and even teachers.
A couple years ago I was a tutor at a high school during which it was really easy to see the reasons for such self-entitled minds. Occasionally being told about all the latest ‘student drama’ going on, which involved other students, parents, and teachers- it was a repeating occurrence that these students could get what they wanted if they did enough tantrum throwing. Instead of having the patience endure and will to ignore these cry-baby tantrums, parents just end up giving in. They don’t follow through with consequences for bad behavior and they don’t make them work for anything they give their child, like an allowance. For Pete’s sake- I see kids turning 16 and their parents just give them a brand new BMW just for being their uncontrollable snot-brat kid. I’m not saying that I had to buy my own car when I turned 16, but I sure as hell had to stay “in line” if I wanted to be able to use the p.o.s. that it was.
Teachers are not any better, not just with school discipline but what they actually require students to do to receive a particular grade. I mean, what the fuck- I thought getting an A mean that you not only did the required mundane work, but you went above and beyond what you were ever expected to do. I’m currently a student pursuing a legal career and its extremely frustrating when some half-wit stoner in my Computer Info. class can get an A just by simply completing the assignment (whether is was done correctly didn’t seem to matter). It seems that not only are a lot of the students achieving A grades just by doing the bare minimum, but that then leads me to think that the teachers are just as lazy! Bare minimum work done on an assignment means bare minimum work that the teacher has to do in grading it. What kind of “learning/education” is that!? One teaching that doing the bare minimum, doing a half-assed job will still give you high quality earnings. No wonder these nit-wits think their entitled to so much for doing so little.
BLAH! I’m sick of listening to those bitching all the time in my few classes where the teacher actually makes you go above and beyond just to consider giving an A grade. Yay for those teachers!!!! YOU FUCKING ROCK!! That is not a sarcastic remark, I really do appreciate having those teachers who actually demand me to work hard and think hard if I was to achieve high rewards. But… huh, its a funny thing that so many others in those classes just complained all the time about the teachers- calling them “unfair assholes”. LOL LOL I ALMOST feel sorry for those self-important, delusional hoop-jumpers.
May I adopt you?
That depends. What kind of allowance are you offering? LOL just kidding, my work quality is too expensive 🙂 hahaha….