The Creative Mind

Greetings good citizen,

Certain thought experiments are fun and others are just disturbing. I’d opine that most often there is a ‘mis-match’ between the concept and who gets to play as we can observe in this peculiar piece

It’s a rather curious collection of responses with half of the respondents staying ‘in character’ Their response was heavily influenced by their ‘claim to fame’, which is to point out that there is zero ‘outside the box’ thinking on display, even from the one respondent known for his ‘innovation’.

And understand good citizen, if it were proposed that we assemble ‘a panel of experts’ and set them to the task of solving the United States problems, the idea would enjoy HUGE support.

Nothing succeeds like success and humans have disturbing tendency to ‘transfer’…‘If Moe is so terrific at doing this, just imagine what he could do with that!’

Even when the ‘skill sets’ required to succeed between ‘this and that’ are apples and oranges! On occasion, a well rounded individual does indeed ‘rise to the challenge’ (but that’s more the exception than the rule…and ‘success’ is often measured as ‘unfailure’ rather than exceptional performance.)

But I digress…

One of the respondents at least took a practical approach, he (a scientist) stated right up front that making him ‘president’ would change little.

The engineered ‘three way power split’ prevents anyone (who isn’t already ‘entrenched’) from walking in and upsetting the applecart.

Which says something pretty disturbing about who plays ‘puppet master’ in our political theater but there it is.

Which is to ask that even if we were able to assemble a ‘panel of experts’ and set them to the task of solving the republic’s problems, who would we ‘tap’?

As today’s ‘thought experiment’ displays, most people ‘are what they do’…

IF we selected people who are already ‘successful and prosperous’ would they change anything?

Probably not.
If a person is prospering under the current environment, why alter it?

So we’d need to utilize other selection criterion to avoid adverse selection.

In A Simple Plan, I ‘use’ expertise to its maximum advantage, the individual leverages their expertise into the top position…but the closer you get to the top, the broader your skill set must become.

Which is to say that in order to succeed one must truly be proficient at ‘problem solving’… just as the ‘cannibals’ among us have become.

If they can’t figure out what to do they either outsource it or they eat it.

Actually, these days the most popular choice is to ‘compartmentalize’ trouble, then you ignore it, making it into your successor’s problem.

Which is to say many of today’s ‘success stories’ are centered not on solving problems but ignoring them!

Look at the environment and peak energy…

Hell, it’s Sunday morning and Sporky Dorky is chatting up his latest ‘jobs’ bill.

The ‘solution’ to the unemployment situation is easy (and it always has been.) You simply need to re-adjust the work week while reducing the ‘expense picture’ for the typical worker.

Make housing free while chopping the work week down to twenty hours, unemployment instantly ‘disappears’. (Banks and the stock markets will ‘vaporize’ along with this step but fuck ‘em, they've outlived their usefulness anyway!)

And anyone who thinks the problem WON’T be solved by re-adjusting the work week is yanking your chain…or they’re an idiot, pick one.

How unfortunate is it (for roughly half of us) that the 'infamous they' appear to have opted for plan 'B', which gets you to the same place as reducing the work week gets you only backwards.

If you reduce the number of workers it becomes unnecessary to reduce the work week.

When they finally DO take the obvious steps to solve the crisis they will marvel over why ‘no-one thought of it sooner’!

Unless they attempt ‘half a loaf’ which will absolutely FUCK too many people. You can’t cut the workweek without FIRST cutting the expense picture.

And YOU (you lucky dog) will have known the solution all along!

You will also know what will happen if they try to cut the workweek without reducing the expense picture, so you’ll be prepared.

Mine is the kind of expertise that is seldom brought to bear in situations like this, largely due to ignorance. People can’t support what they don’t know exists.

Which is to ask, good citizen, that you be willing to expose my ‘madness’ to a broader circle of your acquaintances, even if you introduce them to my writings for their ‘comedic value’.

Because nothing is going to change if we don’t start talking about it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner