No Worries

[Stonehead]

So I read something in one of the threads where someone mentioned that hard work pays off. Right... another lie.

To make the news, your story has to be one of the consoling lies that a culture, any culture, tells itself to make the ordinary suckers’ lives seem bearable to them. If your bike is rearended at a stoplight and you spend the rest of your life tetraplegic, it’s not going to be on the news. It’s a big story to you, and it’s the kind of story total strangers enjoy hearing, if only out of morbid curiosity, but it won’t make the news. It’s too true. It’s not an exception.

 

But if you suddenly regain the ability to walk after years of lying there paralyzed, that’s news. The TV crews will film your every wobble. Not just because it’s unusual, but because it’s a consoling lie. Don’t think so? Try calling those same news crews a few months later, when you slip back into paralysis. See how many of them show up to film that big story.

 

We all know these stories about happy exceptions to the rule. Here, we’ll start one and you finish it, TV news style: “A young immigrant arrives without a penny in his pocket, not speaking a word of English….” The correct ending: “…then he earns ten million dollars and starts an ethnically-restricted scholarship fund.” That’s the only way he makes the news. All the other immigrants who started out washing floors and are still washing floors aren’t news, because their stories are statistically valid, i.e. true. The censors don’t want true stories, they want Cinderella, over and over and over: the shining exception, the distracting lie.

 

Try keeping track of the stories you see featuring “ordinary people” and you’ll discover that they’re all lies: Illiterate nobodies get rich. Terminal cancer case is spontaneously cured. Parakeet and cat become best friends. Behind all these like the breath of the grave whisper the simple, censored facts: the poor stay poor. Millions of terminal cancer patients die on schedule. The cat grabs the parakeet first chance it gets, and kills it slowly, torturing it with great pleasure.

 

When a culture really wants to censor the horrible truth, it takes these stories and puts them together into an “inspirational” movie. And that movie is called Forrest Gump. Next time you want to see censorship in action, just watch Tom Hanks acting out every single lie his screenwriters could fit into two short hours. Moron becomes profound; cripple becomes star athlete; Vietnam builds character; hick turns billionaire; hopeless boyhood crush fulfilled at last…. Forrest Gump is the best example of real censorship you’ll find—because in our era, censorship has gone on the offensive.

 

If you’re one of the non-miracles, the tetraplegic who stayed tetraplegic, the penniless immigrant who remained penniless, the effect of years of this kind of censorship is to convince you that it’s your own fault. If you were any good, a miracle would’ve happened to you. So you suffer not just from being unable even to wipe your own ass, but from guilt about it.

 

That’s the fun of censorship: you show your version of the world over and over, till everybody who doesn’t fit it is so miserable they want to kill themselves. And then they do—and the punchline is, even that isn’t news! Your suicide will not be televised—unless you were famous already. In that case, they’ll show it non-stop, because it tells another convenient lie: that life is just as hard at the top, it’s lonely at the top…when the simple fact is that life at the bottom, or anywhere but the top, is so unbearably lonely that it takes non-stop aggressive censorship to keep the losers from killing themselves en masse.

 

The truth of the matter is that we have to have substitute 'pain relievers' to obscure the harsh reality of life. Even if you're not living a hard life, you have eyes to see someone that is. There's no escaping it. So, give me 350 channels of tv, fm radio, sports, alcohol, and other things to blunt the edges. And, to feel really good, give me some days of sunshine for some stellar climbing so I can lose myself in the moment.

Edited March 2, 2004 by Stonehead

[RobBob]

Good for you, Stonehead, you keep playing the role of fatalistic drone, and people like me will keep believing in themselves, regardless of what others think, stepping up to the big plate, regardless of the odds...and hittin' the ball outa the park.

[Stonehead]

You, sir, are the eternal optimist. You've swallowed the rhetoric propagated by Hollywood--hook, line & sinker.

 

Funny that you use a sports metaphor too. Like all the kids who dream of hitting it big, the fact is that the stars are one in a million. When middle age hits, the kids find themselves driving forklifts in a warehouse with a mortgage and three kids to support, indebted to a life of servitude where the dreams are only displaced to the next generation to continue in the hopes of striking it big.

 

Kind of like hitting the jackpot on the lottery. Do you keep playing that game knowing full well that you're chances of losing are greater than you're chances of winning? Not talking about life itself, but of going for those impossible dreams that the majority of us will never attain. You see it on the commercials, like that Nike commercial with Ali promoting 'keep trying' (variation on 'just do it'). It's a pipe dream, I'm telling ya. A commercial message packaged as a philosophy of life propagated by nearly all of the movies put forth by Hollywood, that is, things work out for the better if you keep trying. Bullshit.

[Gripped]

Stonehead,

Have you been watching "Fight Club" again???

[Stonehead]

Feeling disgruntled. The sun is shining but I can't climb today. Got other pressing matters to deal with.

[Gripped]

Well, you're right. Life is a lot of suffering, and we're a slave to the machine USA. I like to watch the feel-good-movies, because they make me feel good. I like to have a couple beers on the weekend, because then it "takes the edge off". I like to climb, because I can feel like I have no boundaries (and any setback is caused by myself, my climbing partner, or by the indifference of mother nature).

 

Keep in mind, that the "Man" is also pretty indifferent to your plight... and if you attack your life like you attack a tough pitch, or a desirable summit, then you'll find some success in this world. SOME success... and some setbacks too.

 

In the end, what it comes down to, is that I'm pretty damn happy to be alive. It's all about the struggle, and I'm really enjoying it.

 

Cheers

[RobBob]

For what it's worth, I was a lazy smart-ass in school, getting pretty good grades w/o trying...right on thru engr and grad school.

 

It wasn't till I started a low-tech, low-brow, grind-it-out kinda business that I found out just how much hard work, hustle, desperation-inspiration, etc. are worth. Suddenly, you find yourself looking around for successful role models to help guide you through. Suddenly, the sports analogies are truly more valuable than the thermo courses and other bullshit you learned. Anybody who played an infield baseball position learns in a visceral way that you better play the ball, or the ball is gonna hit you in the teeth or the nuts.

 

I'm here to tell every one of you bozos who'll listen that the Horatio Alger stories are true. But like butting heads on the line of scrimmage, the winners always are the ones that want it bad. That doesn't guarantee success---but lack of direction and lack of desire do guarantee that you will not win against those that are willing to push harder.

 

 

 

Just sit back, and let your peers in Asia show you how badly they want your job, Stonehead. They're gonna run over you like a Sherman tank.

[Stonehead]

Easy for you to say. You're an evangelist because you're one of the successful exceptions to the rule. For you to succeed, others were displaced.

 

I believe in trying as opposed to not trying but, damn it, sometimes that's not enough. Hard work, in itself, is not enough.

 

Sometimes the winners are those who are clever enough to work the system.

[Gripped]

Stonehead,

 

Climbing analogy:

 

If you're out there climbing, and you go up the wrong "obvious gully" You might bust your butt, but you won't be getting anywhere really. Don't just keep "working hard". Keep your head up, and look around. As soon as you realize you're off route, back off, and start again. C'mon man. It's pretty straight forward.

[Stonehead]

I'll tell ya where that analogy falls short. In climbing, I have found that it's much simpler even if there are unknowns. With the exception of weather, the feedback is more immediate and I can gauge what responses I need to do to correct the course. Plus, I don't have to deal with the unpredictableness that's characteristic of making it in the career world.

 

In climbing, the goal is mutual. I don't have to work with competing interests such as all the others around me clambering for the top spot, using whatever deceptive means to attain it.

 

Yeah, fortune favors the bold. Seems though it's all about knowing when to fold.

[RobBob]

Yeah, fortune favors the bold. Seems though it's all about knowing when to fold.

 

Look, I'm an evangelist because I'd like to pass along some good luck. Knowing when to hold em or fold em (a business, a job, on climb, whatever) is an intellectual decision separate and apart from the drive to succeed. You make a cold, calculated decision "do I stay or quit?" If you feel that sticking with it is the right choice, then you forge ahead with enthusiasm, making it clear to friend and foe alike that you are 100% into what you are doing, nobody puts forth more effort than you. Pretty soon, some people decide that hey there must be something to what you are doing---the enthusiasm is contageous. Your detractors will get the sense to avoid tangling with a zealot. You gain momentum.

 

I'm telling you, it works. It's not boldness or arrogance---it's determination. Sure, you have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of other things in order to intensely pursue something. But if you do, you stand a lot better chance of getting the brass ring than you appear to believe today, stonehead. Ask VC guys what they look for in an entrepreneur. The most succinct descriptor I have ever heard is "a monomaniac with a mission."