(2009)

Previous discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The MacLeod Life Cycle reminds me on the 5 seasons of the illuminati calendar:

Verwirrung Season of Chaos January 1-March 14

Zweitracht Season of Discord March 15-May 26

Unordnung Season of Confusion May 27-August 7

Beamtenherrschaft Season of Bureaucracy August 8-October 19

Grummet Season of Aftermath October 20-December 31

From the book Illuminatus!

See the Scott Alexander review:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-gervais-pri...

I liked that model a lot, but it made me a bit sad too.

All my life I was bad at being a loser, somehow I never really felt I fit in. I thought this was because of psychopathic tendencies or something. However, after reading this I realized there was another option and I was just clueless.

This is interesting enough, I’d buy a book about this (audiobook at least).

I’ve tried to limit myself to only the best and most practical books about leadership that didn’t start corporate speak, and I doubt Gervais Principle would be quoted or used in work conversation, so it’s perfect.

Focusing only on the second and top layer of the diagram, I usually call them “the increments and the excrements”.

The distinction between losers, clueless and sociopaths has been very useful in my career.

It made me recognize how many times I, or people I know, was the weakest link in the chain, the clueless.

So have been the many examples of power talk and the importance of information.

Anyone else can't scroll on this site?

The most interesting parts of the essay are the ways that Rao (a full proponent of the niche psychotherapy school of transactional analysis) applies his view of psychoanalysis to describe the social dynamics between coworkers with differing levels of nihilism.

He argues that the 'sociopath class' of social-climbing nihilists map 1:1 onto the leaderships of large organizations but it's rare in the real world. Usually there are people of all levels of naiveté and nihilism at all ranks of organizations, with naive true believers mixing with nihilists at the top, the middle and the bottom fairly equally, because the world has too much churn to settle into the kind of density-separation equilibrium he describes.

That was a fun read, and it might even explain why a lot of Gen-z is opting out of any sort of career building, wanting values instead (or next to) a paycheck. They saw their parents do The Office in real life.

Interesting is also that Michael does make a really good arc from season one to when he leaves. He remains clueless, or rather he it dawns on him he does not want to become like Ryan or David (the articles sociopath). Like he says in a later season “Business is about people.”

The office is the white equivalent of the plantation. Blacks were exploited for their bodies on the plantation, whites were exploited for their cognition in the office. Although the misery of this nearly inescapable drudgery is different in terms of its treatment, it is also nefarious precisely because it looks like a voluntary ordeal. The net effect is no different at all, sheepshearing in the form of lines of code, customer service, sales, finance and HR functions. The sheep wear their earmarks proudly as they are fattened for the slaughterhouse. “My wool is graded by woolmark”, “My wool is kashmir”, as they walk ever so proudly to their doom. The office is the abomination of the 20th century. It turned samurai into salary men into otaku. With the wave of feminism, women became more obedient to their shareholders than their husbands, as their milk is turned to cheese for the 1%. The collective body of knowledge from these societies stolen by the AI overlords like a thief in the night, the weights uploaded to a data center in another country, only to push them into inevitable wars.

Death to the office, may it never return.