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Mythologizing and ranting
Nov. 2nd, 2021 12:23 amToday I went to Best Cafe and settled in with an iced mocha, and worked for a while, then organized music and did some sticker shopping for the holidays. Synced another 300GB or so of music to the new phone. 20MB a second is a real drag! They've got to move to a new protocol.
My nephew showed up, to do some studying alongside me. For a while we riffed on the idea of a startup company whose entire philosophy was built around the Goonies movie. "Company motto: Never say die!" "When you're working here, it's 'our time'." "Start every meeting with 'HEY YOU GUUUUYS!'"
Eventually he got down to studying and we listened to some technoey music together.
After a while I got annoyed by a professor sitting at the table nearby and talking to a credulous-seeming pair of people at length about capturing the "innovative genius" of Steve Jobs. Having worked in the depths of the company he founded long enough to build my own picture, I wanted to turn to the guy and start ranting. To avoid going off the rails with my work, I typed it into a document instead.
"How well did you know him? How much of your idea of who he was and what he was capable of came from exploring the mythology built up around him by the employees at the company, and then by the people who wanted to emulate him or ride on his coattails by discussing him?"
"He's not the only person in business or management with a magic crap detector. He's not the only person in business who was occasionally a rude asshole, a showboating negotiator, or a temperamental, capricious, arrogant, judgmental product manager. He also worked hard, had the right friends, was extraordinarily lucky, took his lumps and learned from his mistakes, and never promised to deliver something unless he knew it was technically possible. He was a mixture of good and bad traits. Unfortunately, that means that people who want to be as famous as he was, as rich as he was, or just want to be as much of an asshole as he was and feel justified doing it, can pick up on the bad traits he displayed and claim that those are what makes a great leader. And then other people fall for it. That's the mythology, not the man, lumbering around like a patchwork monster."
"I've known my fair share of managers, and in many cases their effectiveness was greatly enhanced by traits that were completely the opposite, or even the reverse, of the mythology of Big Steve. But you don't want to draw from those people, right? They don't have a dramatic arc, and they don't give you license to throw tantrums, keep secrets, mock the establishment, and do other 'disruptive' things that sound like fun. You want to wear that black turtleneck and blue jeans to give off a signal? Big Steve did it to express himself, not to remind people of Big Steve. But that's why you're doing it. That signal is permanently changed now -- and there could not be any better, clearer sign that you are some other kind of person. I hope those people across from you absorb every word and then go home and laugh about you. Good day sir!"
Of course I didn't say that. It would be abrasive and start an argument, and, what was the point?
After another hour or so I wrapped up and my nephew returned to campus. I rode downhill as the twilight settled over the city. Rachel described it as the "gloaming", which I thought was a really cool word.
At the house I moved sheets to the dryer and watched three hours of Midnight Mass. Interesting but slow-moving interrogation of religion, with some crowbarred scenes to let various characters act as mouthpeices for different aspects of faith. Taking a very deeply trodden path in horror:
A group of casually religious people suddenly renews their faith when outside-of-science miracles begin happening in their midst, and the skeptics among them get a weird kind of comeuppance for their doubt in God, right up to the point where it's revealed that God isn't performing the miracles but some demon, or ghost, or alien, or vampire, or zombie, or weird mutant lab experiment, or angry squirrel, or other suitably unnatural but also heretical MacGuffin. Then the religious people get their own comeuppance, and no one wins, but maybe a few people survive by weird coincidence, and that's perhaps evidence that God is around after all, just more, you know, ineffable.
The core lesson unintentionally becomes this:
Miracles, rather than being evidence of God, are evidence that something is deeply horribly wrong nearby and you should probably pack a "go bag..."
My nephew showed up, to do some studying alongside me. For a while we riffed on the idea of a startup company whose entire philosophy was built around the Goonies movie. "Company motto: Never say die!" "When you're working here, it's 'our time'." "Start every meeting with 'HEY YOU GUUUUYS!'"
Eventually he got down to studying and we listened to some technoey music together.
After a while I got annoyed by a professor sitting at the table nearby and talking to a credulous-seeming pair of people at length about capturing the "innovative genius" of Steve Jobs. Having worked in the depths of the company he founded long enough to build my own picture, I wanted to turn to the guy and start ranting. To avoid going off the rails with my work, I typed it into a document instead.
"How well did you know him? How much of your idea of who he was and what he was capable of came from exploring the mythology built up around him by the employees at the company, and then by the people who wanted to emulate him or ride on his coattails by discussing him?"
"He's not the only person in business or management with a magic crap detector. He's not the only person in business who was occasionally a rude asshole, a showboating negotiator, or a temperamental, capricious, arrogant, judgmental product manager. He also worked hard, had the right friends, was extraordinarily lucky, took his lumps and learned from his mistakes, and never promised to deliver something unless he knew it was technically possible. He was a mixture of good and bad traits. Unfortunately, that means that people who want to be as famous as he was, as rich as he was, or just want to be as much of an asshole as he was and feel justified doing it, can pick up on the bad traits he displayed and claim that those are what makes a great leader. And then other people fall for it. That's the mythology, not the man, lumbering around like a patchwork monster.""I've known my fair share of managers, and in many cases their effectiveness was greatly enhanced by traits that were completely the opposite, or even the reverse, of the mythology of Big Steve. But you don't want to draw from those people, right? They don't have a dramatic arc, and they don't give you license to throw tantrums, keep secrets, mock the establishment, and do other 'disruptive' things that sound like fun. You want to wear that black turtleneck and blue jeans to give off a signal? Big Steve did it to express himself, not to remind people of Big Steve. But that's why you're doing it. That signal is permanently changed now -- and there could not be any better, clearer sign that you are some other kind of person. I hope those people across from you absorb every word and then go home and laugh about you. Good day sir!"
Of course I didn't say that. It would be abrasive and start an argument, and, what was the point?
After another hour or so I wrapped up and my nephew returned to campus. I rode downhill as the twilight settled over the city. Rachel described it as the "gloaming", which I thought was a really cool word.
At the house I moved sheets to the dryer and watched three hours of Midnight Mass. Interesting but slow-moving interrogation of religion, with some crowbarred scenes to let various characters act as mouthpeices for different aspects of faith. Taking a very deeply trodden path in horror:
A group of casually religious people suddenly renews their faith when outside-of-science miracles begin happening in their midst, and the skeptics among them get a weird kind of comeuppance for their doubt in God, right up to the point where it's revealed that God isn't performing the miracles but some demon, or ghost, or alien, or vampire, or zombie, or weird mutant lab experiment, or angry squirrel, or other suitably unnatural but also heretical MacGuffin. Then the religious people get their own comeuppance, and no one wins, but maybe a few people survive by weird coincidence, and that's perhaps evidence that God is around after all, just more, you know, ineffable.
The core lesson unintentionally becomes this:
Miracles, rather than being evidence of God, are evidence that something is deeply horribly wrong nearby and you should probably pack a "go bag..."
