Friday, February 15, 2008

Motivate this, bitches!!

Lately I have been trying to consciously criticize stuff that I take for granted. One such feature of my day during hold time (the myriad periods of my day where I am stuck on hold with people waiting for problem descriptions or passwords) relates to the use of stumbleupon.

God help you if you don't know what that is.

Anyway while a certain gentleman, we'll call him 'Vanity' for reasons I can't disclose had me held captive while extolling his many various reasons for wanting to do an upgrade that we already have scheduled. I had one of those rare three pages in a row of similar subjects and what do you know...motivational lists EVERY... LAST... ONE... (the last being supremely ironic for several reasons)

It should be noted immediately after this was the Canonical list of evil baby names.
Vega are Ryu are on the list but I couldn't find M. Bison, Sagat or anyone else from Street Fighter II. A shame, though I must now make my point.

Motivational speeches are like advertisments for erectile enhancement. They make bold claims and support them with testimonials and pseudo-legitimate proof but we all know the tacit truth. If these things were legitimate EVERYONE would know that they would work. They'd be putting it in the water.

I know that's circular but consider. Every motivational list, graph or formula has by definition bold statements with little or no demonstrable proof. In fact the sheer profusion of these fabrications without substantiative proof is perfect evidence of their perfidy.

An iceberg sank the titanic. Throwing snowballs, however vigorously will not have the same effect. If your mind was capable of absorbing a page of textual information and radically reshaping itself then civilization would be radically different.

People just aren't that malleable unless they are children. Even so as a young child it's very easy to leave deep impressions but as we age and gain resilience it becomes harder and harder to sway someone. If you do succeed most behavioral changes are temporary and the status quo resumes in due course. If you don't believe me then think about 9/11 for a minute.

For a day or so I was really, really shaken and upset with the world. But guess what. I, like every other level headed American was able to come to terms with the tragedy and get on with life. Sure things were somber and depressing for a good month but by the end of it things were more or less back to normal. Oh except for our freedoms being usurped by a greedy piece of shit government but that's another post.

Think about it. If such a momentous event could only leave a minor dent in society what hope does another crappy list of vague 'to-do's' really hope to accomplish? You might make a few people turn their lives around or at least bring to their attention the walls that are in fact the sides of a tremendous sinkhole into which their life is mired. But in order to pass muster with me you need some fucking data.

So let's see it, people!

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