9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

Earth day 2008 hits us again today. And it reminds us just how complex an idea can be for a large group of individuals. We are told so many conflicting things about the environment and what we need to do to help, that most of us are embracing the wrong ideas. The Green Movement is a virus.

We are reminded that as a country of 300 million that going green is a good idea. On the surface at least.

Yet each and every one one of us generates about 3 and half pounds of garbage a day. Going green is not really helping anything. We are still a consumer culture. Shouldn’t we be trying to fix that instead?

Yesterday I heard a sound byte on the radio from an analyst about the current economic conditions. (The analyst was a POLITICAL analyst, not a ECONOMIC analyst, so he knows just as much as I do.) He said that the rising cost of gasoline and food stuffs are putting the hurt on American families.

Perhaps if we didn’t expect so much, as Americans, and if we didn’t believe we were entitled to so much, perhaps this “crisis” wouldn’t be a crisis at all. Rampant consumerism is literally killing our culture. Maybe it isn’t, I am not an “analyst”… but…

I think the housing bubble was a two way street. Sure the banks shouldn’t have made stupid loans, but then again, people should have been responsible about their purchases. Buying a million dollar home when you make 80 grand a year is probably a bad idea.

It is ironic because what made our country great in the last 70 years is starting to erode at our ability to perform as a culture and as a country. Don’t get me wrong, Capitalism is great. But what our country needs is responsible capitalism, and responsible government that is more focused on the home front, than on any country with a dictator with a Napoleon complex.

Our tax gross should be focused on keeping our country relevant in the next 100 years. Not focusing on playing daddy for a world that just resents it. Right? Business ethics, education investment, research investment, all those things should be put into a roadmap for our country. We were able to do it once thanks to JFK and NASA. And in a decade we put a man on the moon.

We can do stuff. Cool stuff. Big stuff.

But we need to stop being so focused on the moment. So focused on what we can buy next. That is not a way to live. And it is killing us.

Americans work the longest hours in the world. Seriously. Look it up. And what is it gaining us?

Ulcers and debt.

Just a thought.

1. They fill a hole in your core you didn’t know you had
2. They make you a better person, whether you like it or not
3. They love you for just being a parent, no other reason needed

But who isn’t?

I mean seriously… we are, by nature, selfish creatures. Often the ends always are justified by the means. Unless you are looking for a felony or to burn delightedly in hell, most of the time, it really is not that big of a deal. Because, again, by nature, I think most people expect it. It is a function of our conscious mind to seek to grow beyond our base selfish nature, but we can never truly escape it.

It makes sense. I think people expect others to serve their own goals first. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, really. We all know it deep down that most people, when given the freedom to do so, will seek out the solution that they think is best, and often they don’t measure the consequences against other entities. For example, making a decision about computer security, in the best interest of the enterprise, often will affect users and applications in ways that most security experts cannot be cognizant of. Because a) security experts are not god (although some think they are), and b) because total situational knowledge is almost impossible to have in complex environments.

I think this behavior is the root of all politics. Lack of total knowledge, coupled with human nature to be selfish in some manner, and the need to fulfill personal goals (what you think is best), always leads to direct conflict with others. How you negotiate that conflict is what we call politics. Politics are the natural outcome of having more than two people in any system striving to accomplish some sort of goal. We all like to pull in different directions.

I know that I often will measure the amount of effort to fuss with the politics against the amount of effort it would take in order to just go for my goal directly. I think for the most part, I have been fairly successful in gauging the distance correctly. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a bit of dick when it comes to the way I think things should be. That bums me out to a certain extent (being thought of as a dick), but then again, I think being passionate about your beliefs is the only way to fight the politic leanings in any group. Often I may appear to be a dick, but then again, I think if I didn’t be a dick, nothing would ever get done.

Because after you start having meetings about meetings to discuss what should be in a meeting, someone needs to stand up and say: “Excuse me, but I have some real work to do” and exit the room. People in IT are always thought of as the jerks of the organization. We are always saying NO, or slapping hands, or telling people that there is a better way. It sucks. But then again, the ends justify the means, right? If we let children play with fire, then a lot of shit would get burned to the ground. Users just cannot be held to any standard that exceeds that of a two year old. They will want it now, they will want it yesterday, and they will do whatever they want when they want.

I think the biggest struggle is that we want to have it be a collaborative process. We want our users to work with us in finding the best way to do things. But that requires the higher brain functions of compromise, compassion, and listening to experts. Trust from the users for us, and trust from us to the users about what the business needs.

But that goal is often so unbelievably difficult to attain, I think most IT people just go for the Machiavellian approach.

And we wonder why IT gets outsourced. What I think is that most IT people just suck at the politics. We get biased. We get burned. So we get bitter. And our empathy, emotional intelligence, hits the road.

And we just kind of give up or move on. What is the trick in staying engaged?

I think it boils down to growing an understanding of politics, and of plain human nature. Understanding that most of the time, often unintentionally and often subconsciously, everyone is selfish and can be a prick.

We in IT just happen to bear the brunt of it. I think my boss has the perfect response to it… he responds with it in every conversation.

“We will have to talk about it.”

Promising action with inaction. I used to think it was the most annoying response and it pissed me off to no end. Because I thought nothing would ever get done. But then I realized he was doing it to everyone.

And it works. It is a great diversion. And it serves both parties in the short term, but over the long term allows you to change things to fit your world view. He isn’t deferring us with misdirection and obfuscation, he is merely playing the time factor. Selfishness is inherently short lived.

Brilliant. The end, the means, and the politics all being handled with one sentence.

I drew a key distinction between the Traveling Salesman problem and my own life.

1. I hate traveling.
2. And I hate optimization of my traveling.

Takes me back to school, working on the TSP and grinding my teeth, because after I solved one problem, I still had to do all the other odd number problems on Pages 253, 254, and 257. (If you can’t tell, I loathed rote busy work for homework. Uber-gay.)

Especially now that I have a kid. I know that I don’t want to travel to do my job.

Good thing travel is rare nowadays.

Because all I do is dread it. I hate the anxiety. I hate the airport. I hate the fake security lines. The TSA folks are not the greatest either. Sometimes they are courteous, sometimes they are right assholes. It’s a crapshoot.

Especially when you are a suspected terrorist. Like me. I read once that of all the names on the TSA watchlist, only less that 1% have accurate hit rates. The rest are false positives. And by adding like two other fields to the watchlist, 99% of the ambiguity between names would evaporate. Do they do that? Nope.

Too busy spending money other ways I guess.

So I am off to Omaha today. Not as frigid as Minneapolis, thank god.