psychology

See the Door Before You Open It

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Serdar and I were recently discussing how certain opportunities open doors for people. I noted that sometimes its not opening the door, it’s seeing it in the first place. We can’t open the door until we see it.

(We also want to see the door before opening it in case it’s a bad idea. But anyway, I don’t want to over-follow this metaphor).

This idea of “seeing the door” led me to think about a few examples from my own creative and professional life I wanted to share to illustrate the point.

Creatively, as some of my regular readers know, I do surrealist collage art under a pen name (art name?). I got into this via small press zines, originally just to add some decoration, but quickly got very into the collagist style. Now I’m using museum images, researching art history, and creating some truly strange and wild stuff – and learning about graphics and imaging tools and making new friends.

I’d never have thought of doing this except for, well, a series of events. Now I can see how I enjoy unusual art and such. I have done graphics before, but did I expect to pick up playing Max Ersnt in my 50s? No. However it all makes sense, filling my sense of curiosity, of creativity, and a desire to connect via creativity.

I didn’t see the door until I tried something different.

Career-wise, let’s talk laboratories. As folks know I work in medical research and education as a Project Manager. I got assigned to work on a project to set up some environmental monitoring for a lab, and after some research, found there was other work to be done as well. Suddenly I’m down the rabbit hole on environmental sensors, chemical testing, and equipment so heavy it needs special tables to use – and I’m having an incredible time.

Plus sometimes I wear a Geiger counter at work or get my shoes checked for hazmat.

I’d have never thought that, say, things like liquid nitrogen or worrying about sensor condensation were a thing for me. Yet, I found the world of lab setups exciting and stimulating, a whole new world that called on my organization skills, social skills, and science skills. What started as a chance assignment and my own hard-headed dedication to researching project needs has started to define my career.

I didn’t see the door until I tried something different.

The ability to see the door is just as important as being able to open it. Maybe moreso since we can’t open it until we see it (and if we can’t open it we can learn how to or break it down). To see the door to something more you have to try new things, experience new things, and get educated.

This is why education matters, why new experience matters, why knowing there are unseen doors matters.

I’m in or approaching middle age, depending on who you ask – but I keep going, the above things make me feel alive. I have friends who are the same, always finding new doors, always alive. I have older friends and family who keep finding new things and they have that spark.

Keep finding doors. Keep setting up situations so you can find new doors.

Steven Savage

They Can’t Stand Humanity

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

As is my usual, I’ve got an obsession, and if you follow me you know my latest is about Ed Zitron’s Business Idiots – his explanation for why things are messed up, “leaders” living in abstract bubbles away from reality. Zitron hit on something that summed up things I’d seen elsewhere, that some so-called business leaders end up isolated from reality and some people find that to be a goal Since then, I’ve been chewing this over – like Dan Davies or Ted Giola, Zitron got me thinking.

As I’ve been analyzing the Business Idiot phenomena, it struck me that some Business Idiots actually don’t seem to like people. I won’t be naming names, but you can guess.

I first began thinking about this when I noticed some Business Idiots having a rising anti-diversity mindset. As if acknowledging people’s differences is some kind of assault on their senses and so on. Of course really it’s a mix of political opportunism and a belief in their own superiority (which is easy when you hit the jackpot and spend ten years with yes-men). The thing is humanity is diverse, and the idea that you don’t have to deal with that tells me you just don’t want to deal with people – unless they’re little clones of you.

And clones of you aren’t really people, but the Business Idiot can’t bear to have their world intruded on by anything but the same thing.

This of course also goes into the weird natalism of some Business Idiots. The people who suddenly want a harem and a ton of kids. The people who get real worried about birthrates (at least of some colors of people) yet don’t acknowledge how hard it is to raise a kid in many countries. The people who talk having more kids while forgetting our world is really becoming inhospitable.

Again, wanting a world of people like them (as well as being such Business Idiots that they don’t want to face Climate Change). And they don’t want people, they want copies – something my friend Serdar even speculated on in his book Flight of the Vajra.

But really if you want to get the Business Idiots not liking people, just look at the endless emphasis on AI replacing people. They’re giddy over the idea of getting rid of so many people to replace them with slop, half-baked ideas, and things that “so-called AI can’t do. And yes, insert my usual disclaimer on AI here, but still.

They’re selling us a world with less people – and less people different from them. The Business Idiots don’t like people.

Yet, there’s more. Some Business Idiots get obsessed with life extension and self-perfection, going to ridiculous lengths. Biomonitoring, slamming supplements, dropping ritual hallcuinogens with no instructions, etc. There’s a point where this isn’t so much refining the self (a term I like as it implies a calm approach) but outright attempts to beat the self into a new form.

They don’t even like themselves, these Business Idiots.

Of course it’s no surprise, the Business Idiots, from nepo babies to people who won the VC lottery at the right time then lost their minds, live in a world insulated from humanity. They live in a world of yes-men and confirmation bias, grifters and hangers-on. Past a certain point you have to loose your mind a little bit because you’re outside of reality.

People remind you of reality. Even your aging face reminds you of reality.

So we may laugh at the Business Idiots. But I’m really coming to the conclusion that some of them don’t like us that much and we need to deal with that.

Steven Savage

The Emptiness of Business Idiots

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Sorry for the lack of posts. My fiancee got COVID and I took care of her while she isolated, while work was busy, the holiday was happening, etc. So I sort of wasn’t thinking of my columns for awhile. But now I’m back, and it won’t surprise you that I want to discuss my latest mental chew toy, Ed Zitron’s idea of Business Idiots – people who live in the world of vibes, leading while disconnected, having deliberately sought out their disconnected state of power.

Now a strange thing about Business Idiots is that they really do seek a state that is purely performative. If you’ve ever listed to a podcast with some overpromoted idiot with a business degree or a TED talk that is making the audience cringe you know. There are people who have worked their way up the ladder because their only skill is working their way up the ladder.

Ever see a politician good at winning elections and not much else? Wait, don’t answer that, we all have, and we probably voted for one at least once. That’s a Business Idiot.

The thing is these Business Idiots are posing as something they aren’t. Visionaries, geniuses, great leaders. The thing we don’t want to admit – and they don’t want to admit – is that all they are good at is working their way in the system. If there was no “system” they might not be in power, but their sole skill is twiddling the knobs of our culture.

Kind of like people who treat talking to AI as a skillset. Hmmm.

I find it’s hard to actually see this because the business press and hell, the press in general, loves to laud some vapid moron they have access to. They need that access! So they’ll parrot whatever is said to get clicks and sell issues, and the vapid idiot just gets more powerful. However, I recently found a way that helps me understand Business Idiots.

Social Media. Wait, trust me on this, it’s not “old man yells at cloud time.” It may be old man yells at CROWDSTRIKE now and then, but trust me.

I was recently contemplating the utter vapidity of some modern social media stars, which is easy as we have a lot of examples. They’re good at promotion, they’re good at algorithms, they optimize their thumbnail images. They are in short good at marketing, because a lot of social media being about clicks and selling ads, is primarily a marketing machine.

I’m sure you know some teeth-grinding examples. You know the Social Media figures you hate (as opposed to the ones you love that are virtuous and good).

This Social Media manipulation is a skillset. It can get you rich and famous because you’re tweaking a giant social-technical-financial machine. You didn’t build the machine, you don’t work on the machine, but as a user you spend a lot of time figuring out how to work it. So you can reach great heights – and be insulated from reality, and thus a form of Business Idiot.

The thing is on your way up you don’t necessarily get good at anything else. You’re a salesperson and an attention-getter and that’s pretty much it. You may be famous and powerful because our systems love centralization, but you’re not really anyone but the same person podcasting or videocasting about their latest purchase.

Now when I look at these media stars and work backwards it’s a lot easier to see how our social, media, and financial systems can be taken advantage of. You don’t need any skills but hacking a complex system people are used to and that they probably didn’t put a lot of thought in. You don’t have to be anything but a knob-twiddler if you know the right knobs.

And that’s where we get Business Idiots. Worse, people who are quite competent get taught to twiddle the socio-economic knobs, become Business Idiots, and lose whatever they were.

And you know? You can’t run a complex society that way. As, I fear, we are finding out.

Steven Savage