Do I want into this club?

– A place where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity, advancement, where everyone has a grievance and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self importance and resentment

– Everyone wishes everyone else’s discrediting, demotion and ruin; everyone is an expert in the confidential report, the pretended alliance, the stab in the back. Over all this their good manners, their expressions of grave respect, their “tributes” …form a thin crust. Every now and then it gets pucntured and the scalding lava of their hatred spurts out

– An official society held together entirely by fear and greed.

Reading this article from Stacy McCain about the media mocking of a college video of Christie O’Donnell from college and this article from Lori Zignato about “Blood money”, it brought up a question…

Why would I want INTO this ‘club’ or even care about their approval ?

I think it’s important to go back to the basics and ask the individuals who haven’t yet been tainted – what kind of people they like to hang out with and what kind of stories they like – what intangible values are championed by their heroes?

Walt Disney stories. If they weren’t compelling, they wouldn’t sell, even if parents really just want to have a couple hours of quiet by letting kids watch them. There is a reason kids pay attention to the stories, and ask to watch them again and again.

Any Disney heroes who delight in corrupting the innocent people around them? Who champion the underhanded stab in the back? Who are motivated by fear, greed, resentment instead of love, honor, self sacrifice?

Nah – can’t think of any myself. In fact, I have noticed that little girls really want to be princesses, and thieves become princes who protect the kingdom instead of looting it (Aladdin).   Hmmm.  

In strategy work this is one way to prove or disprove a theory – look for secondary evidence. If “X” was true, it would look like the following. Do I see that pattern emerging? 

If not, then the theory is generally more wishful thinking than true. The theory that we should all aspire to be condescending, amoral, disdainful and champion the loss of innocence instead of respecting the decisions of those who choose to guard their own…

Besides the intellectual elite and those who aspire to be – how many others want to live that way & admire people who do? It’s sort of like the “Friends” plots – at some point living between an apartment and coffee shop with nothing except snappy dialog / wardrobe and nothing meaningful to say or do gets old.

click “Read more” below if curious what the quotes at the start of the post were really about.  They were authored by C.S. Lewis 

Those quotes referred to what Hell probably looks like.