Another step away from being a pathetic loser

Will I exert my desires on the physical world or will the physical world exert its power on me? Will I let other people dictate how I live my life or will I set the terms of my social exchanges? Will I allow the culture of an organization to shape my career or will I pursue what I find most valuable regardless of the consensus view on what is "right"?

My world has always dominated me. When I say my world, I'm referring to things as fundamental as the relationship between my mind and my body. All that talk of The Edge was my way of thinking about how hard I have to exert my psychic will over my physical body. My conscious, rational brain has a hard time dealing with my unconscious, irrational mind. My conscious mind has always been easily cowed by my fears. A little discomfort, either the physical pain of a workout or the psychological challenge of approaching a stranger, is all it takes to get me to go hide in the corner. I'm a pushover.

I've been struggling with this issue for over a year. My blog entries are a chronicle of my facing all the ways that I manage to be a wimp. You can see all the ways that I let the world dictate the terms of my life. For all that I tell myself I'm internally driven, the world exerts it will far more than I exert my will on the world. I've been dominated. I've never dominated. Just look at my last couple of posts. I'm lamenting how the reality of world does not mesh with my desires. That's my world pushing me around.

I tend to accept the terms offered by other people. I acknowledge their control of the situation. They shape the terms of the relationship. I come to them seeking acceptance and hope that they'll deem me worth their time. People sense that need. I sensed the plaintive yearning to be accepted when I interviewed people who had been out of work for awhile last year. They came into the interview grovelling. Their tail was between their legs and the rolled onto their backs, they were willing to do anything for a job. That submission was a huge turn off. Why would I want to associate with somebody so pathetic.

That was me in pretty much every social interaction I had with a girl until I was 18 or 19. I was pathetic. I put them in charge. They were the alpha in the interaction. That doesn't work very well with the ladies. I've made myself the beta, gamma, omega, whichever Greek letter is appropriate, over and over again in my life. I've always thought that being an alpha required some kind of vigorous physical exertion or extraordinary confidence, but it's really just a matter of exerting your will onto a situation. It's not letting the other person dominate an interaction. It's about meeting people's gaze, exuding confidence, and letting them know that you're not going to readily accept their terms for the interaction. It's about dominating rather than being dominated.

Inconsequential

Systems seek to render competition irrelevant. When the bureaucracy and its minions determines which ideas will have the advantage, competence stands little chance against connections, cronyism, or conferred status. All that really matters is how well you can work the system.

The "smart" people have figured this out a long time ago. My father-in-law told me how impressed he was with the intelligence of Tim Kaine, Senator-elect for my home state of Virginia. (He claims to have talked to Kaine at some event a few years ago.) The (former) Governor has it figured out. He's going to the center of power to curry favor and garner tremendous personal wealth by manipulating the output of the saps who insist on actually doing things. A guy I work with is pursuing a similar path. He's leaving behind doing things for managing things. He loves to drop little nuggets about the budgets he's working on and the presentations he's putting together for different managers. It's clear that he wants to get in a position where he has power in the system. I've seen him doing things for managers, running meetings, putting slides together, gathering information, all in an effort to show that he's capable of managing the system.

Of course the system will carry on regardless of who's at the wheel. It doesn't really matter if is this guy gets to manage a group or whether that role falls to somebody else in the organization. The capabilities of any one person in a system are largely drowned out by the complexity of the organization. The limits imposed by the structure of the system dictates how well a particular company will perform in the marketplace. Systems don't die (ie, big companies going bankrupt) because a bad manager was put in charge. Systems die when people stop buying the thing that the system has been built to deliver. Hostess is still the best in the world at making Twinkies. People just don't eat them anymore. There is limited value in working outside of the system to accomplish something new. The new is difficult to merge into an established system. It's better to spend your time integrating yourself into the hierarchy that controls access to the levers of power. Merging with the system ensures that you'll be able to stick around and maybe get a few perks that fall to the system's power positions (substantial for Tim Kaine, largely inconsequential for my colleague)

I have a strong aversion to simply fitting into the system. I'm fortunate to work in R&D. As much as managers try to make the development of a new pharmaceutical product routine and predictable, there will always be unexpected problems to solve. I get out of the system by working on these problems. It's becoming much more difficult to avoid encroachment of the system into other areas of my life. A bigger government means that a greater and greater portion of my life will fall under the purview of one bureaucracy or another. Eventually, there may be no way to escape the system. What I want for my children, my life, my career will mean nothing in the face of a system that requires complete and absolute conformity and compliance.

The success of the US rests (or maybe I should say rested) in its unique ability to nurture the human spirit. In the US, you are (were) free to pursue those things that make you want to get up in the morning. Warren Buffett can advise somebody to take the job that they would take if independently wealthy because there are virtually unlimited opportunities. The parts of the system that make those opportunities possible are rapidly closing. The lose of those opportunities leaves more people subject to the system. That means more people are no longer free to exert their individuality. They're just another part of the system now. No more or less important than the other guy in the system. They're inconsequential.

What is lost with surrender

What do we give up when we surrender to processes, procedures, and an arcane systems of spoken and unspoken rules? Exceptional performance is no longer worth much. Because the rules and their arbitrary enforcement decide who will succeed and who will fail, success and recognition are no longer coupled to results. Compliance, which usually means that nothing of note has actually been achieved, becomes the go to strategy to power and riches. Well, that and corruption.

Personal effort and sacrifice are not recognized in a system that rewards compliance and conformity. Systems seek to perpetuate themselves. The best person to run a system is the person who has shown the greatest aptitude to preserve that system.  The Army of World War II was much different than the Army that has been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Post WWII, the Army became more bureaucratic. The system evolved to protect generals from the responsibility of leadership. Do what's expected and you'll be fine.

But exceptional performance is all about doing what is NOT expected. Sticking with the routine in pursuit of the status quo just returns more of the same. There's no growth. The next breakthrough will come when somebody goes outside of the system to find something new. That effort will come from an individual's desire to make shake things up. People look to shake things up for all kinds of reasons, but recognition for that effort justifies the risk and struggle. The success of the US can largely be ascribed to the financial and social rewards that come from working your ass off to make something happen. People want to get rich because rich people get the beautiful woman, the fancy house, and the freedom to do whatever the hell they want.

It also helps that there are plenty of resources floating around for people with the inclination to go get them. You can get a loan if you need one. Come up with a decent tech proposal and you can get funding. It's fairly straight-forward to start a business. In all these arrangements, an individual tasks on the risk of the loan and applies all their skill and effort into making something bigger and better. You take the risk, you get the rewards.

Accepting the system, surrendering to the ease and predictability of the illusion of comfort and predictability, removes the chance that you'll get rich and famous by applying your expertise to a valuable problem. The more systems we live under, the fewer opportunities there will be to pursue the rewards for individual excellence. On election night, I could feel that we're shifting to a state where more and more people are comfortable with the system. The implications of that recognition are profound and very unsettling.

What can no longer be ignored

I'm struggling with the election results, but I'm not sure whether the issues I'm struggling with would be any different if the other guy had won. I could have ignored the issues if things had turned out differently, but as it is, I've spent the last hour trying to bring some sort of order to the chaos of my thoughts and feelings. My struggle isn't really with the concrete results of the election. As much as I dislike the current administration, there would be no dramatic difference with somebody else at the helm. Every national politician is primarily interested with expanding their power and influence. That means making the government more powerful and influential.

Confronting the implications of a more powerful and influential government is my real struggle. Government is bureaucracy. The rise of the bureaucracy marks the decline of the individual. Systems have little interest in or need for people driven to do things their own way. Disrupting the accepted way of doing things is actually suppressed in powerful bureaucracies. Success is determined by how well you can conform with and fit into the system. Success is a function of surrender rather than an expression of individual will.

Most of my professional aspirations are derived from a desire to work outside of a rigid hierarchy of expected behaviors. I strive to achieve things that require me to draw from my personal resources. I try to avoid those things that require me to rely on established processes and procedures. I want to become a leader so I can get people to leave behind their reliance on established routines to find their own way. I'm sitting here wondering if I'm crazy for thinking about going against the system. Who am I to think that I'm stronger than the system?

The election results make it hard to ignore the trend towards control by a central authority over more and more aspects of our life. I've been trying to ignore that trend. Rather than confront what the election of 2008 implied about the direction of our society, I worked hard to rationalize it away. I viewed it as an outlier rather than recognizing it as a valuable insight into the evolution of our culture. I wanted to ignore it and keep going on my merry way. After tonight, I recognize that the trend towards more control will only keep growing. 

There are other signs of the trend towards the reliance on rules to establish order in complicated situations. The pharmaceutical industry has been turning away from R&D for years. My initial response to an article that describes this rejection of research scientists by the pharmaceutical industry was to rationalize it away. I was poised to write a post or two on how that article illustrated the need for the research side of the business to exert itself. Our value is not being recognized. Once the business sees how much they need research, the precipitous trend away from R&D will reverse itself. Is that just wishful thinking? Fundamentally, research is complicated, expensive, and incredibly inefficient. It doesn't lend itself to simple metrics or efficiency measures. It's hard to bureaucratize. If the messiness of R&D is what is really keeping it from the core of the business, my effort to get the business side to recognize our value is doomed before it has really even begun. 

I can see a scenario that as I rely more and more on my personal abilities, as I become more and more of an expert, I weaken my ability to influence and shape my organization. In pushing away the bureaucratic, I will be isolating myself from the levers of power that are needed to get things done. My accomplishments outside of the system will result in rejection by the system. This line of reasoning leads to the conclusion that the course of action with the greatest probability of success is to embrace the system, yield my personal ambitions, and master the bureaucratic procedures that will allow me to increase my power. That course of action negates everything that I've been striving for during my entire career. 

So you can see why I'm struggling. Success in my field, scientific research, requires the skills and thinking style that run counter to an organization's desire for order and control. Success in my industry requires embracing the routine. In order to succeed as a scientist, I have to reject what is currently considered good business.