Archive for November 16th, 2007
Back Bay Grouch
Posted by Bob in How Things Work on 11/16/2007
Excuses and the Mantra
Posted by Bob in Coaching Session on 11/16/2007
I keep getting comments that amount to, “I’m too smart for the Mantra” or “I’ve got my own agenda.”
Basic training is as boring for me as it is for a D.I. To the extent that YOU get discipline, I do not HAVE to keep pounding in the basics. Everybody who does not get the basics thinks he’s too smart for them. Which makes more work for me.
BORING work.
Two other commenters said, respectively, that people keep finding exceptions to the mantra and the mantra is too much at once. Who do you think you’re fooling? It reminds of students who would use the old excuses I used for not giving the right answers or not showing up. I had to explain I had not only hears those excuses, I’d USED them.
The three excuses for failing to have the discipline to use the mantra are transparent, not only to me but to Dave and everybody else her who is serious. Those of us who are in ACTION have no trouble with the “too much at once” or the “exceptions” crap. It’s odd that no one but those with the respective excuses ever run into these problems.
The three excuses cited above cover two simple human motivations: 1) You don’t want to appear average, so you want to make your own argument and look smart, regardless of the effect on the larger struggle, and 2) you have your own agenda.
I don’t mind people breaking a discipline I have no right to impose. I do, however, object to people lying to themselves and to us. We all do that. We all do that all the time. But like other human failings, it should be minimized despite the fact you can never get rid of it. I am not sure I would want to the kind of robot that couldn’t lie to himself or want to deal with such.
But these ARE delusions and excuses. An old warrior can hear those coming out of himself.
AFKAN
Posted by Bob in Comment Responses on 11/16/2007
Take time and talk with high school teachers, or the human resources people at a serious company, and you will be told what I have been told, and what I have seen, tragically, in the example of my nephews.
A high school teacher told me, “We are not in the ‘education’ business. We are in the entertainment business, and must organize our entertainment in short bursts, dealing only superficially with an issue for no more than three minutes, and then we switch – like a commercial break – for a minute or two. The parents are happy, the kids get B’s or A’s, and the Administration is happy.”
ZERO attention span.
I use the Mantra with the warm-up of the words “White Genocide.”
Their reaction to THAT phrase tells me if the Mantra has a chance of falling on fertile ground.
You MUST reach them where they are; they just are not functioning at our level, yet, and may not, for a long time to come.
Believe me – if you get a negative reaction to “White Genocide,” you are trying to be rational with the irrational.
That is the surest way to impotence, anger, and madness.
ME:
Lots of theory. You act as if I didn’t know any of these people, as theorists will.
The Mantra works. You ought to try it some time.
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