Yeah, I admit it.
I’m weird.
This morning, I’ve been thinking about how sometimes I think about thinking.
We just had a situation where a contractor was installing some welding booths in a building to which we are transferring a product manufacturing process. The crew installed the booths in such a manner that was completely unacceptable to us because they were flimsy as all get-out and not to either our specifications or our expectations.
When our Maintenance Manager asked them why they left the booths like that, the reply was, “That’s how we were told to install them.”
Turns out, they were sort of right, but were still wrong. What they never questioned was where the 5 boxes of braces, upgraded casters for the doors, and upgraded steel brackets for the fume evacuation equipment was – all of which they didn’t load on their trucks when they left their building in Houston that morning for the hour drive to site - mostly because they don’t usually install those extra parts.
These guys have installed so many welding booths that the team consisted of less senior members who just did what they did without thinking. When I asked them why they would walk away from a job like that, they truly were shocked because that this is how they have installed booths at other locations and nobody said anything. This was the first time they installed in a company with the stringent safety and quality standards we have.
Most of us have done something similar. I know I have.
I’ve performed the same or similar tasks so many times when there is something different needed, I simply miss it. Society likes to stereotype this into a man thing, but women do it, too. Most of the time when we are comfortable with past activities, we simply don’t read the instructions to see if anything has changed and if so, what that thing is.
If it worked then, it will work now, right? Even if there are a few screws left over…
Every day that passes confirms we are living in an age of post-reason – and it isn’t getting any better. I do not think it is because reason is dead, it is because dogma has replaced reason in our “thinking” classes – or at least those classes that should be thinking.
From governance to philosophy to science, thinking has gone out of style because people in these classes believe they already know everything – and for people who know everything, there is no need to think, reason or even consider anything contrary to their positions. Messing something up the assembly of your Kullen from IKEA (which is just an improvement on the Hurdal) ((gratuitous Deadpool references) is one thing, but messing up domestic social, economic or foreign policy is something different altogether.
When you think about how repetitive and predictable the media reporting is, you can see how people get locked into a pattern that overlooks anything that contradicts that pattern and simply dismiss those contradictions.
There is no evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption, for example.
British historian Andrew Toynbee, in his exhaustive 12-volume A Study of History, argued civilizations fall because their leadership abandons the problem-solving function that is central to any effective elite. He notes that civilizations rise when a creative minority outputs new and effective ideas that change the civilizational paradigm and the elite simply leverage their status, power, authority and money to mainstream those changes. This creative minority is soon vested with the status of minor gods and their pronouncements become unquestionable and unassailable. When a civilization (or the societal sub-units of it) reaches this point, people wait to be told what to do, what to believe and what to think.
But sooner or later, that sainted minority runs out of ideas that solve the problems and begin to assert that their stale ideas work they are just not being implemented correctly or aggressively enough. Those ideas are so important the people must be mandated, and people are forced to stop thinking about them and just comply.
I know this seems partisan, but it is merely fact – most of the people who have adopted these positions are on or from the left, largely because what they believe cannot withstand their own tests of validity.
Look at the programs the Democrats propose every single year. They are based on inflexible and coercive mandates, extortion, and outright bribery rather than any history or evidence of being successful. For a century, the American left has been stuck on stupid, pressing forward with ideas that have been failures since the late 1800’s – mostly because these are the only things they know how to do, being variations on the same themes. Of course, the rename and rebrand them, but there is literally nothing they are doing today that wasn’t discussed in the velvet upholstered salons of British socialists in 1880.
The bulk of Americans aren’t brain dead; they chose to stop thinking. They don’t know the difference between their Kullens and their Hurdals.
So, that’s my take on this Saturday morning while thinking about thinking.
Yes, I’m indulging my inner nerd this morning.
This reminded me of the parable about the stick and the carrot. We were conditioned for many decades/centuries about the carrot and the stick, or reward and punishment. If you do the work, you get the reward, else you get the punishment. Over the last many decades people have asked for just the reward, no stick, and in those many cases the government has obliged. Social handouts are the reward, given without requiring work upon the receiver's part.
Now work has become the Stick, and all most people want is the reward. Just look at what the US Auto labor union is requesting, and the government is supportive of. Higher pay and less work.
Sorry if this is a tangent from your posting Michael, but it's what registered in my Nerd brain when I read you well worded posting. All the best. My 2 cents.
In the past, when someone hired someone to perform a service or task and a mistake occurred, it was rectified and at minimum the service provider offered an apology and in some cases some type of recompense.
In this all inclusive, diversified, and often unqualified everyone gets a trophy regardless of poor performance age we live in, the consumer must now accept that the poor performance must just be accepted. “Everyone makes mistakes, oops.” There is no correction, no recompense, and no apology. In fact the entity that was hired and failed often tries to make the consumer (who often had to prepay for the service) feel guilty for not being more understanding to human flaws, often to the point where more gullible patrons are compelled to apologize for judging the poor performance they received after paying up front.
I call BravoSierra on that. I encourage us all to stand and demand acceptable performance and be willing to act against poor performance when we foot the bill.
This includes the clown car full of politicians they call DC.