Competitive Wiring

I don’t want what I am supposed to want. I have a competitive wiring, so people who have known me in previous incarnations will have seen my crazy eye when I choose to go for it. Even when my skills, knowledge or ability aren’t 100% up to the task. We back the underdog over meritocracy, or we would be wired to roll over and play dead. A school buddy teases me about shouting, “we can still win this” at 78(ish)-0 playing Maritzburg College. We lost 111-0. But when I am the me I like, I try find ways to wiggle out of the nonsense. I don’t want to play in a world where we are constantly weighing and measuring each other. In a way that stops us seeing each other. Where the quality of our lives is determined through regular sortings and divisions. Where we cut each other loose like gangrenous limbs when we can’t reach common cause. I want more than that. Part of that comes from acceptance. I know. I am trying to work out what I can and what I can’t accept.

Competitive Wiring

Beyond Contest

Meritocracy is supposed to be a push back on Hereditary Privilege. The idea of social mobility where you can still make a success of life and “climb” even if you are born into difficult circumstances, “if you deserve it”. Money and consumption as a measure of personal worth. One of the mistakes made during the European Colonial era was a pissing contest revolving around Civilising Missions. Different colonial pretenders trying to spread their world view faster as a superior form of civilisation. Simplifying our drive down to a road from savage to sage. Progress. Development. Upliftment. A linear step ladder. Assuming we know the goal. Meritocracy says it is still okay to divide people into groups of better and worse, as long as there is a path to move between them. We obviously want the people we care about, and ourselves, in the best container. Incentivising us to create more than just for ourselves. Barriers to entry and exit protect people from instant and true meritocracy. This constant weighing and measuring stops us from seeing. Money is made with Capital in Containers that solve Problems. But the good things in life aren’t problems, and personal worth isn’t measured.

Manneken Pis

Self Worth

It is comforting to think we get paid based on effort. If we can look at the world and believe the trick is to understand cause and effect. That actions lead to reliable, predictable, consequences. Unfortunately, that is not how it works. Sorry If you worked really hard and are a really good person. If your solution is the same as someone else’s, then the only way you get paid more is if the person with the money (1) likes you, or (2) doesn’t know about the equivalent solution. We have a long history of roles, class, and standing in society. New solutions shake things up. Price is based on supply and demand. Knowledge spreads and more people can provide the solution. The word Capitalism has almost lost its meaning, but I think it is worth thinking of separately from Corporatism and Pricing. Capital is breathing space. It’s not about you, your effort, or your solution. It can morph. Corporates are just how we create barriers to protect effort. Prices are just a way of counting and communicating. All three are tools. Learn to use them and you build the ability to value yourself, rather than being priced by the market.

Life's Battlefield

I have a growing belief that the fundamental secret to making money is going full yogi on it. Maya literally means “illusion” or “magic”. Pick your analogy. The Emperor is wearing no clothes. There is a little man behind the green curtain. Maya (Money?) is just “a magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem”. Maya (Money?) is “that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal”. It is possible to wrap too much of our identity up with how we make money. To see conspicuous accumulation as a scoreboard of a life well lived. Who we are. How impressive that is. Life as a civilising mission where you are trying to take the story of yourself from savage to sage. The Gita is a story used to help unpack the battlefield of life. How we deal with all this temporary nonsense, and the waves of unimportant noise, and protect the stuff that really matters. I think part of that lies in seeing that not all good ideas are good business ideas. That money making is focused on solving temporary supply and demand problems. That how you make money is not who you are. Detach. Separate. Build space. Create a buffer for the noise. Don’t allow the world to define and rank you by your earning ability.

Dealing with Life's Battles

 

Life Pulses

Life can be pitched as a story of progression. In a world with salaries that promise to go up, with time and experience. With one directional promotions, as we take a step up on the ladder. A gradual expansion of the standards to which we are accustomed. Till we retire. If we accept this, I can see why people confuse price and value. Why salary gets mixed up with worth. Roles and grades in big corporations try to standardise levels of success and seniority across the incomparable. Mirroring what markets do with price. An illusion of control and sense. Markets allow us to put a number on anything if two people agree. But don’t confuse this with value, permanence, or a ranking of souls. A buyer and seller have options, and constraints. They have preferences and choices. Those change. In both directions. The problem with the corporate world is it tries too hard to mirror our class and caste structures. Our prejudices. Our loyalties. Our egos. To over time turn people into a big deal. Price does no such thing. Today’s price makes no promises. It is today’s price. What you do with it is up to you.

Up and Down

Discovering Fire

A foundation of our superiority challenges is a core belief in Second Class Citizens. It is hard to separate out some of the complex problems around sexism, xenophobia, racism and classism from things we hold to be true. One of those is that we get taught preferences from a young age. We overhear stories about successful people and unsuccessful people. The voices of people we admire soak into the voices in our head. We question if we are good enough. Then we start seeing the strengths of others through this view. Engineers hire Engineers. Accountants hire Accountants. South Africans hire South Africans. Oxbridge graduates hire Oxbridge graduates. Even when we superficially break from these categories, seeing the strengths that don’t resonate is challenging. Wealth creation is a team sport. But if you have a God Complex thinking you are the source of value, and everyone else is there to support you, then clearly you are not going to see the strengths of mortals. Till they discover their fire and topple you.

Longue Durée

I still consider myself monolingual even though I have a childlike grasp of a few other languages. I believe you learn languages through embodiment. For the last few months, I have been following the Fluent Forever method of training my ear, tongue, and facial muscles to do French. It is a physical process. Deep soaking. The reason History matters is that much of the way we respond to the world is deep soaked. We don’t just wake up and decide who to be. A new French word I have learnt is “longue durée”. Long Duration. Giving priority to long term historical structures over the short term time frame that is the domain of the chronicler or journalist. I can’t wake up and decide English isn’t my mother tongue. If you want to understand me, you need to get to know me. Personally. But I would be fooling no one if I said my history didn’t matter. If I want to change, that is where I am changing from.

"American Progress" by John Gast

Stuff the Stuff

Connecting lifestyles to scorecards of success is both incorrect and dangerous. Capital can live forever if treated well. It can sustainably generate real returns, and feed life, or it can be spent. 0-5% real growth each year adds up, even if it doesn’t seem as impressive as a new car, a bigger house, or a fancy holiday. “The Stuff” we judge each other by. The stuff we form our prejudices around. It also traps us in a lifestyle connected to the privilege, or lack thereof, we are born into. Privilege includes skills and talents, as well as the social capital and network we use to get an income. The dance between privilege, merit, income, and lifestyle, traps us in dated and formulaic wobbles out of sync with the music of the time. Traps us in racism, classism, nationalism and projected fears. Real Creativity needs space to breathe. That space can only come if we rewrite the rule book. Rewrite rules that have been soaked so deep, we don’t even know they are made up. Stuff the stuff, we make the rules.

Free to Dance