Re: Dorothy Dunnett book club

[petronia]

I am on chapter VII of A Game of Kings. Status updates mostly for rondaview's benefit but feel free to read along or comment as you like. XD

As Tetris creates hypnagogic visions of falling blocks I fell asleep to falling Scottish. It feels weird getting this sort of thing through a non-Victorian filter (but what to call the filter?). When I was a child/tween I accepted that you had to put some initial level-farming into a historical novel: Sir Walter Scott or the Baroness Orczy would not, for instance, inform you who the main character was until a few chapters in. I know who the main character is but I don't know why. Forebodingly, this setup didn't end well in Miura Kentaro. Stylistically, there's a lot of synecdoche.

"Further reading" linkage in the mental map I'm currently building out:

Strawberry Switchblade - Being Cold
The Gervais Principle II: Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and Gametalk
The Twelve Days of Christmas (via charmian)

Comments

[disprove.livejournal.com]

I am on chapter VII of A Game of Kings

Oh so you haven't finished the book either! I was starting to think I was the only one in my flist who hadn't, much less read the entire available series.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I've only got Danica gunning for it right now, although I know quite a few people read it ages ago. It's basically the Diane Wynne Jones situation all over again. XD I had to go to the library to find the beginning of the series, which I've always known was there from haunting that shelf, but directed search didn't stop me from picking up another dozen books in the interim, rolling.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

That blog post about needing to act (or at least talk) like a sociopath in order to rise in the corporate hierarchy is disturbing.

On the one hand, it is saying that if you really want to amass personal power, you need to commit to that goal and conduct your interactions accordingly - not just sometimes, but all the time (or as much of the time as possible). And that is fair in a way, since the only way to improve any skill is to practice it constantly.

But on the other hand it is disturbing since it implies that the ability to remain in control during face-to-face social interactions is the only skill that really matters, in the end. Either you have it, you learn it, or you are a clueless loser locked out of promotions and pay raises, forever.

The guy who wrote that post isn't actually a sociopath, as far as I can tell, so I wonder why he chose such loaded terms. Also, what's up with all these articles about classifying people XD. I like his article on introverts and extroverts, though - introverts being people who prefer to keep separate emotional energy accounts and extroverts being people who prefer to keep their emotional energy in a common account. It does explain introverts who don't freely share information about their personal affairs but who are good at talking to strangers. It doesn't really explain the deep introverts you sometimes run into, who are mistrustful of strangers but will go really really deep with the one or two people they pour all their emotional energy into.

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[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I should say, the ability to remain in control during face to face social interactions, and the willingness to deploy that skill for personal gain. The clueless don't have the skills, and the losers, for whatever reason - principle, neurosis, or laziness - aren't deploying them.

And then we all dream of a paradise where we are rewarded based on our actual skills that produce value to the company, amen.

(That is, unless the company's actual product is "management", in which case, bring on the "sociopaths" XD.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

The dude self-IDs as both a sociopath and an introvert. XD But then, as far as his articles are concerned, "sociopathy" is a life skill/philosophy you can improve with practice, if you have the stomach and the energy for it. It's essentially a cynical/trolling take on Maslow's "self-actualized" as it applies to large organizations. Per which, the terms "sociopath", "clueless" and "loser" come from a pyramid-shaped editorial cartoon at the beginning of the first article. I think the organizational lifecycle the dude spins off from this is sadly accurate in its broad strokes.

Ribbonfarm is linked here because his framework is actually really great for making sense of the conversations in Dorothy Dunnett. Considering that all of Ribbonfarm dude's textual analysis is on the US version of The Office, the Dunnett characters (at least in the first book) sort hilariously well into his three categories. Their lifestyles are also a prime example of what Ribbonfarm dude (and which book did he borrow this from?) terms "high barbarian"... but then I think no one would deny that descriptor, applied to 16th century Scots. XDD

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[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Is it sadly accurate? I worked for a big company, but it was a textbook publishing company that made hiring decisions - at least in the Editorial department - based on how well your cover letter was written. And promotion decisions based on some combination of intelligence, work ethic, and sales figures. Possibly I was too close to the bottom to see anything clearly. I could easily believe something like this for people in the HR department, but managing interactions with people is half their job anyway.

Dude does have a good explanation for how sociopathy runs in families, I'll give him that.

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[(Anonymous)]

The organizational lifecycle part of it, IMO. Based on your previous descriptions of your old company, I would characterize it as a later-stage one in which the clueless have taken over most levels of management. XD; And yeah, you don't really see it at the lower levels unless you're a super-clued-in sociopath type already. I'm at a junior manager, intermediate consultant sort of level now, and the political stuff is starting to make sense - though I don't claim to be particularly on the ball by nature. XD; It makes my head hurt, really. There are definitely people who play the game so well that they've shot up in the organization, though, and if you're not a player it just seems basically mysterious.

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[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ha - that was me, btw.

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[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

But would being later stage necessarily mean that the clueness have taken over? I'd think it'd also mean that the power structure has had time to ossify, especially since all the technical innovations are now in place and running the company has come down to personnel management. If there are more clueless people in publishing, it's probably just because there's not a lot of money or power in it.

I am reading a book about the "positive thinking will lead to positive material outcomes" movement (Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich - this is a really good book btw. ), and I keep thinking that the ribbonfarm dude would say it's only the clueless that buy into schemes like this, because the unambitious losers have accepted their place in the hierarchy and the sociopath climbers are too busy honing and deploying the REAL skills that will allow them to advance.

It's also reminding me a lot of Paulo Coelho and all his stuff about other people existing only as props in your own personal fulfillment story.

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[petronia.livejournal.com]

Well, by definition an organization moves into "late stage" when the clueless takes over (otherwise, we're talking someone else's life cycle model XD). Another way of saying the power structure ossifies is that the sociopaths start jumping ship, looking for other opportunities. And yeah, I would say publishing, academia, non-profit all have relatively high levels of clueless. It's self-perpetuating.

I suspect there's another correlation between ribbonfarm dude's so-called "cluelessness", these fields, positive-thinking self-help books, and a major group known as "women". = = Which is another discussion maybe.

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[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

It is funny you say that, because the author of Bright-Sided claims she was first exposed to the positive thinking movement when, as a post-menopausal woman, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. XD Brest cancer is a very "pink" sphere, the material goods sold in order to promote tribal affiliation are raise money include a lot of cosmetics and jewelry, as well as stuffed animals, which the author found disturbing.

Anyway the fact that this was her first major exposure made me think that she must have been, not only very hardworking and organized, but also very lucky in her previous life, because you run into this movement wherever there is suffering and powerlessness. It also reminded me of when I was working the used bookstore and all the self-help books for men were about changing your external circumstances, while all the self-help books for women were about changing your attitude. I think this has actually started to change (all our books were at least 5 years out of date because we pulled the valuable=recent ones off the shelves to sell online) and that more self-help books for men are talking about attitude these days.

And then I made a brilliant leap of logic and decided that maybe part of the appeal of positive thinking is that you change both your attitude AND your external circumstances - so therefore, the message appeals to both men and women.

Barbara Ehrenreich's historical account of how this movement came about, by the way, has it as a 19th century "cure" for Calvinism, which was a religion that required constant internal monitoring for sinful or indulgent thoughts, with the expectation that you'd probably go to hell anyway. The only way out of this "religiously imposed depression" and morbid self-examination was hard work, but industrialization did away with a lot of the work that women used to do, like canning and making soap. So they became professional invalids instead, just to have something to do. Positive thinking replaced the idea of a hostile universe with the idea of a welcoming universe where God wants you to prosper, but kept the idea of endless self-monitoring for the wrong kinds of thoughts (in this case negative thoughts).

Anyway, I'll stop before I summarize the whole book for you XD.

Talking about late-state organizations and ossification, I was saying that a company needs to ossify a little bit to attract the sociopaths in the first place, because prior to that (say at a tech startup) there's no room for anyone who isn't actually contributing "hard" skills to the core product of the company. And I don't see any reason for sociopaths to jump ship from even very ossified companies where there is still $$$ to be made, like say at G.E.

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[petronia.livejournal.com]

Nah, tech startups always have at least 1-2 sociopath types - the founders. XDDD If there's not at least one sociopath founder it doesn't survive, because it can make the product but not the sale or the funding call.

I used to know who did the original "pink" branding for Breast Cancer Awareness but the info's fallen by the wayside... it's considered one of the most successful branding campaigns of all time.

Self-help for men: it seems to me rather that men are stuck in a moan and angst stage these days XD; - all the data flying around about boys getting less education than girls, middle-aged white dudes who lose high-paying jobs and can't get new ones. Interestingly enough I've seen some change-your-attitude! stuff re: developing resiliency, because if you've been a highly-educated white dude coasting all this time until the economic meltdown, you haven't suffered as many character-building hard knocks as the less privileged!

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[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Came back here after you linked this post on Dreamwidth. I just realized I was wrong to separate people into "sociopaths, who develop their skill at manipulating others to the exclusion of other skills" and "people with hard skills". The one honest-to-God sociopath I do know irl is a computer programmer! He also plays WoW and has a food blog where he discusses all of the ways he trolls the wait staff. /rolls

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[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think if you actually have no hard skills ppl will cotton onto you sooner or later. The trick is to have skills but not to quibble at selling out if you have to.

(I had a bit of an argument about this yesterday with G, who's the opposite of a company sociopath - he's willing to sacrifice his own career (i.e. not move up/sideways, not quit for a less toxic environment) in order to protect the blue-collar workers he's managing, since the company is downsizing and looking for every excuse to fire these guys before they become eligible for the 30-year retirement package. :P)

correction

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Not a computer programmer, a computer architecture engineer. From a wealthy family, if that adds anything.