Sudden Impact
or A Silly People
Two tangentially related thoughts:
Thought One: Years ago, I worked in a number of insurance companies. In every one of them, we referred to the Legal Departments as the Sales Prevention Departments. In reviewing benefit plans and insurance contracts, the Legal Departments left no stones unturned — except time and opportunity cost. By the time they got through doing whatever the hell they were doing, the opportunities were typically gone. They probably went to other insurance companies the Sales Prevention Departments of which had gotten the benefit plans and insurance contracts done sooner.
Thought Two: Bill Maher once warned that Americans are a silly people. Comparing us to China, he said:
In two generations china has built 500 entire cities from scratch, moved the majority of their huge population from poverty to the middle class, and mostly cornered the market in 5g and pharmaceuticals … they have 40,000 kilometers of high-speed rail. America has none … California wanted to build high-speed rail connecting the entire state but alas could not. We’re six billion in the hole just trying to finish the track connecting the vital hubs of Bakersfield and Merced … we’ve been having Infrastructure Week every week since 2009, but we never do anything … the inertia, the ass covering, the graft the lawyers, the cowardice — nothing ever moves in this impacted colon of a country. We see a problem and we ignore it, lie about it, fight about it endlessly, litigate it sunset clause it, kick it down the road, and then write a bill where a half-assed solution doesn’t kick in for 10 years. In San Francisco it took 10 years just to get two bus lines through environmental review. The Big Dig, a tunnel in Boston ,took 16 years … China once put up a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days. They demolished and rebuilt the San Yuan Bridge in Beijing in 43 hours … We binge watch. They binge build.
I happened to think those two thoughts because, while eating breakfast one morning, I was leafing through a magazine to which Anne subscribes. I won’t name it here because I’m allergic to bars — the jail kind, not the I’ll-have-a-dry-martini kind. As I idly turned the pages, I was arrested (not the jail kind; the frozen in my tracks kind) when I saw the image below. This one picture is worth Bill Maher’s 1,000 words.
It’s the result of our being a silly, bureaucratic, over-regulated, ideologically driven, disunited, absurdly cautious, politically preoccupied, squeaky-wheel-greasing, superficial, unfocused, unambitious, unmotivated people who’ve taken our eye off the ball and our foot off the gas. We can’t define happy (let alone woman, but that’s a whole other post). But we want what we want this second, God damn it, because we have no idea what we’ll want in the next second. We’ll feel entitled to it. And we damn-well won’t care who else might or might not want it or what greater good it might do.
Crash
Let’s ignore everything except the column on the right side of the image above. There’s more than enough there to gauge the opportunity cost, starting with its heading: The 5 Impact Areas. Impact, indeed. The impact of trying to ensure the five things listed there is the rough equivalent of a train wreck. What say we take them one at a time:
Human Health. This means endless studies will have to be conducted to make sure no one from the least concerned to the most neurotically hypochondriacal will be exposed to anything — nothing at all. If the shit from the fruit fly that came in with the HVAC guy’s banana is detected, the project gets shut down.
Climate Health: No carbon-containing products can be used in the building, regardless of the fact that almost everything we build with and use in everyday life derives from carbon in some form or fashion. Regardless of the fact that carbon makes up about 18.5 percent our bodies, including those of the cranks who want to eliminate it — making it the second most abundant element after oxygen in our bodies — we can’t have any of that shit in our buildings.
Ecosystem Health: This one might be my favorite because every special-interest group has its own ecosystemic agenda. But to generalize, if any of the freaks who lie awake at night worrying about their respective definitions of ecosystem find any trace of the shit from the fruit fly that came in with the HVAC guy’s banana in the air, the water, or the soil, it’s game over. They might have a point if we’d otherwise live forever. They don’t. We won’t. Let’s get a grip.
Social Health & Equity: Okay. I take it back. Number 3 is not my favorite. It’s this one because it’s an absolute Squeaky Wheel Convention at every turn. In addition to the surveying, architecture, engineering, project management, legal services, construction materials, and equipment industries, this one includes the Grievance Industry. And if the Grievance Industry could ever be satisfied, it wouldn’t exist.
Circular Economy: If anyone involved in any of this shit had senses of humor or irony, this wouldn’t have made the list. Like #2 and perhaps #3, it ignores change. No doubt the folks who put this one on the list believe in best practices, heedless of the reality that best practices can only be identified in hindsight (otherwise they’d be seeking better practices), connote stasis, and signal an absence of the critical, substantive, and imaginative thinking that would enable them to find or create those better practices. The circular economy will remain circular only if nothing changes … ever.
The best way to derail the train and ensure an impact is to ignore the track.
Go Ahead, Back Up
Life is about choices. We can choose to go right on worrying about The Five Impact Areas and everything else that’s stripping us of our initiative and our ability to compete. We can choose to continue chasing the mice while the elephants are running down the street. We can choose to continue to waste time and opportunity. Or we can wake up.
If we don’t wake up, we’ll only confirm we are, indeed, a silly people.
I was thinking "silly" had an amusing side, with levity and laughter and childlike playfulness, so I thought maybe "silly" might be a refreshing change among the dour rule makers. But I was wrong. Here are some of the key the synonyms for "silly": foolish, stupid, unintelligent, idiotic, brainless, mindless, witless, imbecilic, imbecile, doltish; imprudent, thoughtless, rash, reckless, foolhardy, irresponsible; mad, crazy, erratic, unstable, scatterbrained, featherbrained; half-baked, empty-headed, halfwitted, slow-witted, weak-minded; thickheaded, birdbrained, peabrained, dopey, dim, dimwitted, dippy, pie-faced, fat-headed, blockheaded, boneheaded, and lamebrained. I stand corrected. But Americans aren't all silly. Just the ones who revel holding serious sway over the rest of us (as in power) — and those who worship them. And that's not surprising when you think about it. I've always thought a deep yearning to be an elected official at almost any level of any government as government now exists (sorry Founding Fathers...things have changed a bit) was evidence of having a screw loose. Blend in the narcissism necessary to make climbing the ladder of success by association rather than actually service to the country, and the word "silly" does come to mind — once you fully understand it's etymological meaning. All of that said, and I do go on, there are always exceptions my perceptions. Always. So as Gilda Radner used to say, "Nevermind."